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STORIES & VERSE of WILLIAMS 



STORIES Sf VERSE 
o/WILLIAMS 

EDITED BY 

ALFRED DUDLEY BRITTON 
PHILIP RICHARDS DUNBAR 
CHARLES FISHER HEPBURN 




WILLUMSTOWN • PUBLISHED BY 
THE EDITORS, M D C C C C 



Copyright^ igoOy by 
Alfred Dudley Britton 



TWO COPIES Rfe.C£iVEi 

iltrary of Cong^rdtf^ 
Officd of ttitt 



[(iegUtir of Copyrlghti^ 



ro 8 



-J -J-O o o 



?6 



StCJJ43 CuHV. 



j 



UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON 
AND SON . . CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



TO 

LOUIS LeGrand draper 

IN RECOGNITION OF HIS UNTIRING DEVOTION TO THE 
FOOTBALL INTERESTS OF WILLIAMS, 



FOREWORD 

CF'HE quality of the work which has appeared in the 
^^LitJ* during the past four years has stamped that 
period as the most successful which the literary interests 
of JVilliams have enjoyed, This^ coupled with the fact 
that no hound volumes of the " Z/V." have been put on 
sale^ has led the editors to the belief that there was a field 
for a book containing the best stories and verse included 
in the ^^Lit^ during this period. 

That the book has merits^ the Editors feel sure; that 
it will in some measure appeal to Williams men and be 
accorded their support^ is the sincere wish of those who 
have enjoyed its compilation. 

For kind permission to reprint several selections^ thanks 
are due the " i(^oo Gul" and " Cap and Gown" Second 
Series (Z. C Page & Co.y Publishers), 



Table of Contents 



PAGE 

Providence and the Boss i 

Charles Neivman Hall, ""oo. 

The Gypsy Strain 4 

Arthur Ketchum, ^g8. 

Poor Little Reginald , 5 

Perci'val Henry Truman, ''gS. 

The Spanish Galleon 7 

Charles Neivman Hall, ''oo. 

The Freckleless Village 9 

Philip Richards Dunbar, ""oo. 

Good Jacobites All , , 23 

Arthur Ketchum, ^g8. 

No Robbery 25 

John Saunders Oakman, 'pp. 

Master FRAN901S Sings 27 

Arthur Ketchum, ^g8. 

A Ragamuffin Santa Claus 28 

Alfred Dudley Britton, "00, 

Nantucket ••37 

Arthur Ketchum, ^g8. 

The End of It 38 

Perci'val Henry Truman, *g8. 
ix 



Table of Contents 

PAGE 

Barbara 40 

Arthur Ketchum^ ^g8, 

** Greater Love Hath No Man '* 41 

Charles Fisher Hepburn, ^oo. 

On Board THE "Golden Swallow** 50 

Arthur Ketchunty ^ g8. 

A Stampede 52 

Albert Hopkins y "" 00. 

Cervera at Annapolis 56 

Henry Rutgers Conger, *gp. 

Advice 57 

Perci'val Henry Truman, ^g8. 

Sacrament 59 

Arthur Ketchum, ''gS. 

His Son*s Enemies 60 

Dudley Butler, *oo. 

Nox Christi 64 

Arthur Ketchum, ^g8. 

An Obscure Heroine 67 

Philip Richards Dunbar, *00. 

They Say her Face is Passing Fair 69 

John Barker, ""gg. 

The Shadow of the God 70 

Charles Neivman Hall, ''00. 

The Cuirassier , 84 

John Clarkson Jay, *oi* 

Herb o* Grace 85 

Arthur Ketchum, *g8. 

X 



Table of Contents 

PAGE 

At Saint Fortune 93 

Arthur Ketchunty ^g8* 

i. ABLE •••e**«**a*«a«« J^ 

Perci'val Henry Truman, *p5. 

From Heloise to Abelard ....•.•. 96 
Arthur Ketchum, "gB. 

Applied Mathematics 97 

Perci'val Henry Truman, ''gS, 

As Toll 109 

John Barker, ''gg» 

At Monte Carlo no 

Dudley Butler, ''00. 

The Song of the Cavaliers . . 113 

James Brenver Corcoran, ex-oi* 

*« Which Passeth All Understanding'* . . . . !i6 
Charles Fisher Hepburn, ""oo* 

At the Dawn 122 

Arthur Ketchum, ''gS, 

The Leper 123 

John Saunders Oakman, *gg, 

A Song for Seafarers • . • 130 

Arthur Ketchum, ^g8. 

Principle ,•131 

John Saunders Oakman, ^gg. 

To A Dreamer 133 

James Oiven Try on, ''oo. 

A Letter and a Postscript , • 134 

Arthur Lanvson Goodiuillie, ''oi* 

My Lady Goes to the Play . 138 

Arthur Ketchum, ''gS* 



Table of Contents 

PAGE 

At a Music Hall 140 

Henry Rutgers Couger, ''gg. 

Dead Folks* Hour 144. 

Arthur Ketchum, *g8. 

Not without Precedent 145 

Percival Henry Truman y ''gS, 

In the Hills 148 

Arthur Ketchum y "g8. 

The Other Man's Wife 149 

Albert Hopkins, "00. 

Captives 152 

Arthur Ketchum, ^g8. 

The Other Life 153 

Philip Richards Dunbar, ^00. 

The Autumn Call 155 

James Oiven Try on, ^00. 

White Roses 158 

Arthur Ketchum, "gS. 

Pagan to Priest 164 

Arthur Ketchum, ^g8. 

Friendship above Par 165 

Alfred Dudley Britton, ^00. 

In the Dark . 169 

James Bisset Pratt, ''g8. 

A Reverie 170 

Perci<val Henry Truman, *g8. 

A Song of Sport 173 

James Brenver Corcoran, ex-OI» 
xii 



Table of Contents 



PAGE 



Duets 175 

Arthur Lanvson Goodnvillie, ''01, 
An Epitaph 177 

Arthur Ketchum, ^g8. 

Founded on Fact 178 

Arthur Ketchum, ''gS, 

The Amorous Scientist 181 

James Bisset Pratt, "" g8. 

A Song of Other Days 182 

Arthur Laivson Goodivillie, ''01. 

In Bohemia 184 

Arthur Ketchum, ''gS. 

That Babington Affair 186 

John Barker, ''gg. 

Conviction 189 

John Barker, ""gg. 

The Prince of Greater New York 190 

Percinjal Henry Truman, ""gS. 

A Relic 197 

Arthur Ketchum, ''gS. 

A Bargain 198 

John Saunders Oakman, ''gg, 

A Ballad of Dorothy 200 

Arthur Ketchum, " g8. 

An Affair of the Heart 202 

John Saunders Oakman, ''gg. 

Noel 204. 

Arthur Ketchum, *g8. 
xiii 



Table of Contents 



PAGE 



Three Pipes 206 

Treadnuell CU'velandy Jr., *p7^. 

'99 Class Poem 210 

Henry Rutgers Couger, *pp. 

"The Blind Receive their Sight** 215 

Charles Nenjuman Hall, ^00. 

At the End 222 

Arthur KetcAum, "g8. 



XIV 



STORIES ^ VERSE 
of WILLIAMS 



PROVIDENCE AND THE BOSS 

THE Limited was rushing down river, through 
the growing dawn. Telegraph poles, woods, 
and hillsides, intermitted here and there by the zig- 
zag of the fences, went hurrying by in quick succes- 
sion, and the mists out in the river spun around like 
a top. Fifty-five seconds to the mile, said the engi- 
neer's watch, for they were making up time. 

It was a morning when human mortality seemed 
an impossibility, and that particular river valley an 
instalment of Paradise. 

The political boss and the sycophant sat by the 
car-window, and surveyed the universe with the well- 
satisfied air of proprietors. 

'' It 's a pleasure to live, such mornings," said the 
boss. " How it can be just for any man to be taken 
away before his threescore years and ten, is more than 
I can see." And, having delivered this home-thrust 
at Providence, he turned to the business of the day. 

"Yes, as to Higgins — well, he may be capable 

and honest, but he 's just a few square yards too 

honest for his place. Perhaps he is faithful to the 

party 5 but after this he '11 wish he 'd fired the man as 

I I 



Providence and the Boss 

I ordered him, Instead of talking about honest and 
efficient helpers, and saying he has the legal right to 
retain them, even after I've said 'no.' At 10.30 
the city government will dispense with Higgins's ser- 
vices. No doubt he '11 have a hard time In these 
days, getting another place, but I can't help that. I 
suppose If I was living in old Jerusalem when Moses 
was mayor, and Methuselah chief-of-police, I 'd get 
hit in the head with a thunderbolt, or some other 
heavenly ordnance, but they don't do business that 
way in our times. If a mountain gets In a man's 
way, the mountain goes up In dynamite smoke. If 
Providence gets in mine, why — " And the boss gave 
a grim smile, which told clearer than words the fate 
of Providence in such a case. Men don't seem to 
fear Providence much nowadays, and politicians, 
especially, can afford to treat it with easy and scorn- 
ful superiority. 

Sixty-six miles an hour, said the watch of the 
engineer, and the big drivers revolved three hundred 
times a minute; as for the truck-wheels. Heaven knows 
how fast they went around. The great engine took 
a curve of two thousand feet radius as If It were a 
clock-dial, and then went swaying down the long 
tangent In a cloud of dust and cinders. 

Six o'clock — and the beauty of the morning was 
settling down like a garment. The sun was up, 
though the shadowy hills still hid him from view. 

They came to the bridge where the river pierced 
the embankment and connected with the great, shal- 
low bay Inside. The mists hung heavy In there, and 
even half shrouded the bridge. Strong was the struc- 
ture, — tested, true; and as the engine and six bril- 

2 



Providence and the Boss 

liantly lighted cars thundered upon it, it faithfully 
transmitted the stress to every part. Chord, bar, and 
main diagonal trembled with the swift vibration, but 
there was no fault In them. The keen foresight of the 
engineer had provided for all that, and Interminable 
computations stood sponsor for every part ; but Fate 
sat on the engine pilot, and she cancels whole yards 
of figures and sets down a zero in their place. 

It was 6.05 by the engineer's watch, and the 
minute-hand never passed the thin Roman I. Out 
over the river went the train, with morning air above, 
and only air and water below; and then two hundred 
windows, bright with the gleam of the Pintsch lights, 
went down in the eclipse of the waters, and a score 
of souls " fled indignant to the shades." 

The steam of the exploded boiler leaped a mile into 
the clear, warm summer blue, and the great locomo- 
tive sagged over in shallow water, while the upper 
drivers flew round and round, and churned up a yel- 
low foam. The fish crept up through the twisted 
and shattered debris, and gazed with startled eyes at 
the broken valve-stem, thrashing around, and then 
fled precipitately to the depths. 

They found the boss and the sycophant bowed 
low, with staring eyes looking this way and that 
down the long, gloomy car, and dreaming dreams 
which are not of time or space. 

And all around was the inefrable freshness and per- 
fume of the morning, with odor of woods and song 
of birds ; and down in the city it was 10.30, and 
Higgins still kept his place. 



1 

The Gypsy Strain ' 



\ 
THE GYPSY STRAIN j 

IT comes with the autumn's silence, j 

When great Hills dream apart, .j| 

And far blue leagues of distance \ 

Call to the Gypsy-heart. | 

When all the length of sunny roads, I 

A lure to restless feet, [ 

Are largesses of goldenrod f 

And beck of bitter-sweet. : 

i 

^ 

Then the wandVer in us wakens ^ 

And outs from citled girth, j 

To go a-vagabonding down j 
The wide ways of the Earth. 



Poor Little Reginald 



POOR LITTLE REGINALD 

I HAD n't seen Mrs. Peter before — young Mrs. 
Peter, I mean — since Easter. That was nearly 
six months before, and in six months, I protest, 
one may be forgiven for forgetting a great many 
things. 

We conversed for some little time about common- 
places not worth the repeating. 

" You remember little Reginald ? " inquired Mrs. 
Van Holt at last, with a plaintive droop of the voice. 

I hesitated long enough to review mentally a squad- 
ron of yellow-haired and leather-belegginged little 
Lord Fauntleroys, who belonged severally to the 
young married ladies of my acquaintance. Was there 
a Reginald among them ? I thought so. Still — 
"You cannot have forgotten Reginald, I am sure," 
she added, a little reproachfully, with emphasis on 
the "sure." 

" Certainly not," I answered quickly ; " who could 
forget the dear little fellow ? " 

"We lost him last summer," said she, sadly. 

" I cannot express how your words grieve and sur- 
prise me," I hastened to say. " It is very strange 
that I did not hear of it. Was he ill long ? " 

" He was n't ill exactly — I should n't say," she 
replied pensively. " He died of internal injuries, the 
doctor said." 

" An accident ? " I suggested sympathetically, 

5 



Poor Little Reginald 

" Yes ; he was run over by a cab in front of the 
house, and died a few hours later." 

" How dreadful ! " I exclaimed. " What a shock 
it must have given you, Mrs. Van Holt." 

" I am sure it did. Indeed, Peter said it was wrong 
for me to take it so much to heart as I did. He said 
it was a sin ; but I don't think it was, do you ? " 

" The duty of restraining one's grief at the losses 
of those one loves is a duty more honored in the 
breach than in the observance, I fancy," said I. I 
felt quite proud of that remark. For a man not 
given to making moral reflections, it seemed to me 
rather good. 

" Now you are laughing at me," cried Mrs. Van 
Holt, pettishly. " You men have no feeling, any of 
you." 

" You wrong me, I assure you," I protested ve- 
hemently. Peter Van Holt might be a brute, but I 
was not. "You wrong me deeply," I continued, 
" in believing for a moment I would scoiF at maternal 
affection, that purest — " 

I stopped. There was something like a smile lurk- 
ing in Mrs. Van Holt's features. Then I realized 
my blunder. I was furious. How, in Heaven's name, 
could a man be expected to remember all the misera- 
ble little curs that foolish women might choose to 
lavish their aiFections upon. 

" We have been having beautiful weather for the 
last few days, have we not ? " said Mrs. Van Holt, 
sweetly. 



The Spanish Galleon 



THE SPANISH GALLEON 

TEN fathoms down in the placid sea, 
Where the world is dark and cold, 
With gaping seams, and whitened bones, 
And a treasure in her hold. 

Buried far in eternal night, 

And the silence of the grave, — 
A fitting sepulchre, indeed, 

For the death-sleep of the brave. 

Over her grave the deep-sea fronds. 

With their incantations strange; 
Above, the chafe of the weary sea. 

And the billow's boundless range. 

In coral and sand, a world of green. 

Where the weird sea-creatures dwell. 
With moss-grown beams, and skeleton frame, 

She sleeps her long sleep well. 

In a dream, methinks, I see her now. 

As she seems again to rise; 
Standing again on the homeward course 

With masts that bar the skies. 

Laden with gold, on the Spanish main. 

The New World sinks astern ; 
And naught but the sky, and the clouds, and the waves. 

Can the weary eye discern. 

7 



The Spanish Galleon 

Oh, a summer night on the sleeping sea, 
With the Southern Cross on high ; 

The moon-lit waves, the salt, salt air, 
And the gleam of the tropic sky. 

And away with the wind and the hissing spray, 
For the vineyards of sunny Spain, 

With the sky for a sea, and never a thought 
For the shadow of woe or pain. 

In a moment came the blinding storm. 

And the heavens cleft in twain j 
The rattling thunder, the black, black sea, 

And — farewell to the Spanish main ! 

Down through the shades of endless night. 
With her dark-eyed, swarthy men ; 

Down through the ocean's awful realms. 
Ah, never to rise again ! 

Far down the grand old galleon lies. 

In the sand her buried head ; 
To sleep and sleep, through the fading years. 

Till the sea gives up its dead. 



8 



The Freckleless Village 



THE FRECKLELESS VILLAGE 

SLICE ofF the tops of the High Alps at an altitude 
of four thousand two hundred and sixty-nine 
and five-tenths feet. On this horizontal section 
draw lines connecting the Uertsch with the Ketsch, 
the Lenard with the Roseg. Project these lines 
until they meet and you have to an inch the location 
of the Freckleless Village. 

Deep within the forest cantons, hidden in the ramifi- 
cations of mountain-ranges, it lies like an oasis of life 
in the wilderness of rocks, gorges, and glaciers. No 
binoculared Englishman or bejewelled pork-packer of 
Chicago ever happened within ten pipes of it. And 
for good reason : no one was ever fool enough to 
tunnel the encircling pinnacles; a tramway in that 
region would go straightway into the hands of a re- 
ceiver, and no trolley or cable system was ever con- 
trived which could climb the nine loops of the zigzag 
road that leads up from the valley. 

Larch forests grow about and hide it; a cataract 
throws over it spray impalpable as cosmic dust ; the 
ice-field, like a vast cetacean, hems it in on one side, 
and guards it even at midnight, crawling along with 
horrid crackings. Like a mysterious city of a strange 
people it stands, hushed by the profound silence and 
solemn hush of the Alps, enchanted by the ever- 
lasting slumber of pine and granite. 

But was it always freckleless ? Far from that : 
the most natural result of its location was that 

9 



The Freckleless Village 

Its inhabitants should be generously befreckled. 
The shepherds on the high pastures exposed to the 
elements ; the mowers who seek tufted grass on 
narrow ledges and face the blistering reflection of 
the ice-fields j the village girls, upon whose pretty 
faces snow-clad Madlein breathes his chill winds as 
they milk their goats, — how could even the dimples 
of these escape being hidden in freckles, especially 
Vi^hen the sunsets there are observed to assume a 
coppery hue ? Everybody there, from the patriarch 
down to the youngest baby, had freckles. Cemb rosea, 
the famous hunter, looked like an Indian, his freckles 
were so merged together. As we look for the baby's 
first tooth, with the same assiduity and solicitude did 
these villagers look for the first freckle. But not 
to encourage and foster it, for they were exceedingly 
ashamed of these blemishes, and blushed to be called 
the Freckled Village. They even waited in daily 
trepidation lest the Emperor William of Germany 
should visit them unawares and expose their peculiar- 
ity to the world. 

Clarinda, the daughter of Neyer, the burgomaster, 
the politic, was the prettiest girl in all the village, and 
many a love-lorn youth languished for a look of her 
brown eye. To be sure, her face was dusky with 
freckles ; but as this was no peculiarity, it was at the 
same time no derogation. But though many sought 
her favor, she chose none, and Aldebaran, whom she 
loved, was cold. 

She was of a marriageable age, and as it is the 
custom there to make matches as early as possible, 
her father one day said to her, — 

" Clarinda, I have decided that you shall marry." 

10 



The Freckleless Village 

"But I don't want to marry, father," returned 
Clarinda. 

" Hush, impudence ! " growled he. *' Make no 
objections. I have concluded that Plazetto, the 
baker's son, is destined to become famous. You 
will be niarried to him immediately after sheep- 
shearing — do you understand ? Immediately after 
sheep-shearing." 

" No," said Clarinda. '' I don't choose to marry 
Plazetto, and I won't ; " which, since she did n't 
love him, was a very natural and justifiable thing to 
say. 

Then the politic burgomaster tried to wheedle his 
daughter. " Why don't you like Plazetto ? " he asked 
with a forced smile. " I think him a very likely youth. 
He acts in a soberer fashion and seems to have a more 
profound intellect than the rest." 

" No," repeated Clarinda, " I won't marry him. 
He never laughs. He never dances on the green at 
parish festivals. On wedding days he wears the same 
glum face, and stands around like a big awkward 
booby. Nobody wants to be chosen by him at the 
Festival of the Shearing and called his jewel and his 
treasure. He's a stupid old dunce. I don't like 
him. He never laughs." 

At this the politic burgomaster lost his temper, 
stamped with rage, and cried : " Wicked, undutiful 
girl, you shall do as I wish. You may go to your 
room. There shall be nothing but skim milk and 
black bread for you till you consent." 

Clarinda was a high-spirited girl ; so she turned 
up her bewitching, befreckled nose and tripped out 
of the room. 

II 



The Freckleless Village 

The truth is that Plazetto was a stupid blockhead 
who never entered into the merriment. His imper- 
turbability had led Clarinda's father to the wrong 
surmise that wise thoughts were passing in his head. 
Nothing could have been more false. The demand 
that Clarinda should many him was quite unreason- 
able j she was far too pretty. 

But nothing made Neyer so combative as resistance. 
He began to seek a subterfuge by which he could 
oblige Clarinda to take Plazetto under her own 
conditions. He was politic even in his anger. If 
she had given in, he would perhaps have relented'; 
but now she must marry him, whether or no. He 
would show her parental discipline. Br-r-r I 

" So he never laughs ! " mused Neyer. " Never 
laugh indeed ! Ur-r-r-r ! As though daughter of 
mine must have a laughing lover, a foolish, gibbering 
idiot, an empty-headed, mincing nincompoop ! The 
girl does n't know her own mind. But she must 
take Plazetto. He really must be made a little more 
gay. He is too sober ; no girl in my day would 
take such a fool. How — how can we make the 
hound laugh ? " 

The burgomaster scratched his head in perplexity. 
Then he rose, went to the table, and began to search 
the columns of the Berliner Forschungszeitung. All 
of a sudden he skipped for joy, and could scarcely 
contain himself while he wrote a letter and addressed 
it to Berlin. 

But Clarinda ? She obeyed neither the first nor 
the last of her father's commands. She had slipped 
out into the little garden where the air was fragrant 
with almond and cherry trees in bloom, and where 

12 



The Freckleless Village 

a hedge, the height of her freckled chin, grew round- 
about. She picked an azalea of vivid carmine and, 
putting it in her black hair, looked in the placid brook 
to note the effect. 

*' Hateful freckles," she said ; and after a pause, 
broke out with : " I won't marry him — I won't, I 
won't. He 's too morose. I love only Aldebaran, 
and he — ignores me. He has been terribly busy 
about some mysterious business all the year. I wish 
he would look at me just once. Perhaps I 'm too 
freckled." 

Just then she heard somebody going by on the 
other side of the hedge, talking the while in an 
undertone. She listened. 

" Yes, it must be kept secret for a while — the 
compound. A little glacier-wine, two parts of goat's 
milk unskimmed, and carefully add — Ah, stop ! 
Do not utter it. The hedges have ears. It must 
be kept secret. When the Imperial Freckle Eradica- 
tor is perfected and my native village is delivered 
from the curse of freckles, then every one shall 
become fair-skinned, there will be great fame and 
large royalties awaiting me, and then — oh, happy 
day — I shall be no longer a pauper, but a millionaire ; 
no longer a prophet without honor in his own country, 
but hailed as the man of the hour and the generation ; 
no longer fearful of her father, the politic burgomas- 
ter, but welcomed with open arms as worthy of the 
hand of Clarinda." 

When Clarinda ran and peeped over the hedge, he 
had passed, and she could see only the ragged sleeves 
of his waistcoat, his battered straw hat, and a big pail 
which he carried under his arm. It was Aldebaran. 

13 



The Freckleless Village 

She clasped her hands ecstatically. " So he loves 
me, after all," she whispered. " He loves me, after 
all. And I shall love him always, even if he were a 
pauper all his life." 

She took the azalea from her hair and tossed it 
after him. He started, seeing it fall, then stooped 
and picked it up. No one else was near; so Clarinda, 
peering through the hedge, saw him press it to his 
lips and put it inside his jerkin. 

" I won't marry Plazetto," she repeated, as she 
looked again into the brook and went into the house. 

Some days later a strange mule-train was seen 
winding up the nine-looped zigzag road. When it 
had mounted as far as the village, it stopped in front 
of the white chapel. There were ten mules in all, 
on the back of each a pannier containing two sacks. 
These sacks were labelled, in large yellow letters, 

MUSTARD SEED. 

The conductor of this pack train was an eccentric- 
looking individual. He wore a burly coat of bear's 
fur and a tall Robinson Crusoe hat of the same 
shaggy material. Blue goggles hid his eyes from the 
glare of the sun, and clouds of smoke, which he 
drew from a capacious German pipe, circled in azure 
wreaths about his head. 

But, well prepared as he was for this altitude, he 
was much impeded by the paraphernalia which he 
carried about him. There were thermometers stick- 
ing out of his fur cap like quills on a porcupine ; 
thermometers in the belt of his greatcoat, a fringe of 
them sticking out of the tops of his gaiters and several 
under each arm. On one side he had slung a 

14 



The Freckleless Village 

hydrometer, on the other a pedometer. On his 
back were appliances for measuring heights of moun- 
tains and depths of crevasses. From all parts of his 
person dangled microscopes, hammers, pincers, 
phials, plummets, and a string of labelled notebooks, 
like festoons of popcorn from a Christmas tree. In 
the notebooks he entered the readings of his instru- 
ments after every fifty yards of advance, being much 
harassed in managing the unruly mules and the 
cumbrous machinery of his outfit. When he halted 
in front of the chapel, he muttered, — 

" What a country ! pinnacles ! spires ! needles 
that pierce the heavens ! and a fool's errand ! 1 am 
exhausted — pedometer, ten leagues — barometer, 
four thousand two hundred sixty-nine and five-tenths 
feet — thermometer, sixty degrees, br-r-r ! cold — coat, 
fifteen pounds, a load." 

Although the warm odor of growing orchids was 
in the air, he muffled himself closer, as if afraid of the 
influenza, looked awhile at the glacier, and proceeded 
to tie his mules in front of the chalet of Neyer, the 
politic burgomaster. Having done so, he knocked, 
and with a jingling of dangling thermometers and 
plummets, entered. 

" So you have come," said Neyer, when they were 
closeted. " Are you prepared to make him laugh ? " 

" Yes," returned the savant, '' I will warrant 
the article as strong as that used by any Berlin 
dentist. I have the material in enormous quantities." 

" Good ! " ejaculated the burgomaster, rubbing his 
hands. "And now explain how you intend to go 
about it." 

" This gas," continued the savant^ " under normal 
' 15 



The Freckleless Village 

temperatures is lighter than air, but only perceptibly 
so. But if I establish myself on the glacier and cool 
the gas, as it is generated, by contact with the ice, 
the density will be lowered and it will flow gradually 
down, filtering through the atmosphere, seeking the 
level of its specific gravity. The glacier, as you are 
aware, lies in the bed of a V-shaped gorge, and the 
village is close by. Thus the gaseous stream will be 
kept within narrow bounds as by a funnel, and upon 
reaching this point will spread undiluted over the 
entire village." 

" Marvellous," exclaimed Neyer. " The shep- 
herds, the armaillis, have come down from the upper 
pastures with their sheep, and the shearing is nearly 
done. To-morrow noon the Festival of Shearing will 
begin. The lads will wear their smart gaiters and 
doublets, after the fashion of William Tell. The 
girls will put on holiday dresses with peaked caps, 
and the petra, the heart-shaped leather cuirass em- 
broidered v/ith blue and gold. They will join in a 
dance on the green, after which each youth will take 
a flower and present it to the girl whom he desires to 
call his jewel and his treasure. It is on this occasion 
that I wish this lad Plazetto to assume a more light- 
hearted mien. But go easily. Make the gas only 
strong enough to cause a moderate mirth. I wish 
nothing to be apparent." 

" It shall be accomplished," said the savant 
" And be so good as to accept this present of two 
flagons of wine," continued the burgomaster. "Do 
not drink any of it until your task is done, lest 
the fumes mount to your head and destroy your 
judgment." 

i6 



The Freckleless Village 

*' Never fear," said the other, seizing the flagons 
with avidity, examining the labels and snif&ng at the 
corks. 

Next morning there was discernible, some distance 
above the village on the breast of the glacier, a 
small, square shack, from the nearer side of which 
stuck out a big horn with a belled mouth, 

" What fool has ventured on the glacier ? " growled 
Froben, the printer, gazing with the crowd. 

" It must be he who came yesterday with the 
mule-train," ventured the politic burgomaster. " I 
wonder what he is up to ? " 

'' He is preparing to send us dance music through 
his horn for our festival," said Amerbach, the mower, 
who had once heard a phonograph. 

"No," said Schneiger, the goldsmith, who knew 
nothing about it, but had an old-fashioned funnel- 
mouthed blunderbuss at home. " He is preparing to 
shoot grenades over the mountains against the French." 

Then all turned to the reverend cure, perceiving 
he was about to speak. " The cure will tell us," 
they cried ; " our cure knows. He has seen the 
world. He has been to Paris." 

" Yes, my children," responded the cure. " I 
expected you would turn to me. No one is better 
fitted to deliver an opinion, for I, as you say, have 
been to Paris. Now, if you had marked, as I did, 
that the mules carried bags labelled mustard seed, 
you would have arrived at the conclusion that he is 
preparing to remove mountains. He that hath faith 
even as a grain of mustard seed," said the cure in a 
prophetic manner, " shall remove mountains." 

The fallacy of which reasoning not being perceived, 
2 17 



The Freckleless Village 

a long and weighty silence met the fearful assevera- 
tion, and the timorous drew deep breaths. 

" Which peak will he take first ? " asked Amer- 
bach, the mower. 

" Will it be Piz Zupo ? " asked one. 

" Will it be Piz Corvatsch ? " asked another. 

" Will it be Piz Rosatsch ? " asked a third. 

" Will our village go too ? " asked a fourth. 

" Can't we prevent it ? *' asked several all at 
once. 

Neyer, the crafty, the politic, stuffed his handker- 
chief in his mouth as he listened to these questions. 
But when the last was asked he perceived things 
were taking the wrong turn, and said in grave tones : 

" Fellow-villagers, even if it is the will of the 
Almighty that we, with the heavens, be shrivelled 
like a burning scroll, we can do no better than to 
meet the end, pursuing our accustomed occupations." 

So it was decided that the festival should suffer no 
interruption. 

At noon all the lads and maidens gathered on the 
village green. Clarinda was there, looking more 
beautiful than ever. Plazetto was there ; but he only 
stood apart, leaning up against a tree, silent and 
glum. Neyer was there with the other burgomasters, 
Froben with his printer's devils, Schneiger with his 
apprentices, Amerbach with his mowers, Lugano and 
the goatherds, Samader the president of the syndic, 
and Julier the secretary of the commune. But all 
were oppressed by an unnatural silence. Was the 
earth really coming to an end ? 

Then a cool, sweet-smelling wind that could 
hardly be felt, began to blow down from the glacier. 

i8 



The Freckleless Village 

A smile crept over the solemn face of the cure. 
He took deep whiffs of the breeze. Then he began 
to laugh uproariously. He seized Clarinda about 
the waist, and whirled round and round with her 
across the green. At first the rest were shocked at 
such levity on the part of their dominie ; then they 
also were taken with the same fit of mirth. They 
first began laughing and pointing at each other like 
mad people, and, as if moved by a joint impulse, 
seized partners and whirled after the cure, who was 
still capering like a lamb. Shepherds, mowers, 
milkers, burgomasters, no matter how gouty or 
rheumatic, all mixed like children in the dance, 
laughing as though they would split. 

Neyer, the burgomaster, was left alone. Looking 
about him in amazement, he saw Plazetto, perched 
high up in the crotch of a tree, weeping with his 
face in his hands, as though his heart were broken. 

" Come down, Plazetto, come down," cried Neyer; 
and then the merry paroxysm seized him, and he too 
began to caper. 

Now the sheep, which had been grazing quietly 
at the farther corner of the green, a flock of a thou- 
sand or more, commenced to roll and tumble about 
and utter funny bleatings, like giddy and foolish 
Iambs. Then, instead of running about in a circle, 
they all broke away across the glacier where they 
were dashed to pieces in a crevasse three hundred 
and forty-four feet deep. 

No one knows how long this whirl would have 
continued, had not the unforeseen happened. A 
gigantic booming rent the air. The glacier split in 
two, and a yawning black cavern appeared under the 

19 



The Freckleless Village 

hut of the savant. Hut and mules all disappeared 
into the horrible abyss, and the divided ice-field, like 
Scylla and Charybdis, closed together with a pon- 
derous clashing and splintering. 

The cool sweet wind ceased to blow, the up- 
roar stopped, the crowd by degrees became quiet, 

— a great stillness ensued. The cure released 
Clarinda ; the mowers and milkers, the ancient gold- 
smith, the venerable president of the syndic stood 
shamefaced and out of breath, and nobody dared utter 
the first syllable. 

Then some one cried : " Look ! Here comes 
somebody down the glacier." 

A solitary figure came rapidly toward the village, 
leaping from hummock to hummock, and when near 
was seen to be Aldebaran. He was waving two 
flagons at arms' length. 

" Where did you get these flagons ? " asked 
Neyer, as Aldebaran came up. 

" They are all that is left of the stranger's hut," 
answered Aldebaran. " I found them on the ice, 
empty." 

" Ah," hissed the burgomaster through his clenched 
teeth. "He got drunk and overdid it. The villain 

— he deserved his fate." 

"Wine is a mocker," observed the cure. 

Then they told Aldebaran of the unaccountable 
pranks they had all played and of the loss of the 
sheep. 

" Do not lament this loss, fellow-villagers," said 
Aldebaran, in a reassuring voice and manner. " Let 
me relate my experience. For a long time I have 
yearned to deliver my native village from the bane 

20 



The Freckle] ess Village 

of freckles. My discovery was almost complete. I 
wished to test it upon myself, and for the last month 
have been living on the heights, exposed to the sun 
and all the winds. The compound has stood even 
this crucial test. Behold me ! There is not a 
freckle on my face." 

Wild cheers greeted this declaration, for his com- 
plexion, formerly so mottled, now so brilliant, made 
it evident he spoke the truth. 

He continued : " Do not lament the loss of your 
sheep. Let another industry spring up among you. 
My cure for freckles is infallible. Let us all unite 
in its manufacture. Its revenue will exceed that of 
sheep-shearing a thousand- fold. We will use the 
cosmetic ourselves, sell it wholesale to the world, 
and besides becoming fabulously rich, will be in a 
short time renowned as the Freckleless Village." 

Wilder cheers ensued. Then Neyer, the burgo- 
master, the ever-politic, the crafty, who already 
imagined Aldebaran in princely attire and vested 
with supreme honors, changed his mind. 
' " Villagers," he cried, " rejoice with me that the 
sheep are lost. I had vowed that my daughter should 
marry Plazetto as soon as shearing is done. Now 
that there are no sheep, the shearing cannot be com- 
pleted, and I am hence clearly absolved from my 
vow. I hereby give Clarinda to our deliverer, Al- 
debaran, if he will deign to accept her." 

At these words everybody uttered a wild huzza, 
for the denouement was pleasing. Clarinda kissed 
her politic father and ran to Aldebaran, who clasped 
her in his arms regardless of ragged elbows and 
patched coat. 

21 



The Freckleless Village 

Then, as the festival continued with a less riotous 
course, Clarif)da and Aldebaran left the crowd and 
walked together through the larch forest that bordered 
the glacier, and wandered hand in hand through a 
field of rhododendrons. Far above the village, their 
feet caressed by gentian and delicate edelweiss, their 
thoughts with the stars, they sat down on a great 
rock. 

Now the sunset came, the rose color of the glacier 
faded, the colored hght on the rocks died. Imper- 
ceptibly a veil of shadows succeeded, the moon cast 
a ghostly blue over far-glittering ice-fields, and like 
dream spirits their souls flitted over the valley below 
to the dim chaos of snow-capped summits on the 
horizon. " Like a sifted shower of black snow, a 
snow made of shadow, the night fell, and the melan- 
choly of the mountain wilderness, the grand nocturnal 
solitude of the lofty regions cast over them its charm, 
profound and disquieting." 

Then the owl came hooting out of his hollow tree, 
and Aldebaran, the mystic influence of love upon 
him, sent the well-remembered note with intensified 
meaning across the deep abysm, — 

" Liauba^ liauha^ po-aria^ 

The heart-rending, melancholy yodel lingered in 
the air, catching new glamour from echo to echo, 
until it expired like a lament ; and when the last ves- 
tige of sound was lost like a breath in the infinite 
depths of the valley, her head was on his shoulder, 
her cheek was moist against his, and she breathed a 
little sigh that was sweet music to him. 



22 



Good Jacobites All 



GOOD JACOBITES ALL , 

NOW to all goodly gentlemen, > 

Bide they in East or West, | 

Be greeting at this holy time. 

When swords find sheathed rest. ' 

And we will pledge the King and Cause i 

Without demur or parley, , 

And we will wear on loyal breasts 
The white rose of Prince Charlie. 

The rebel hordes their worst have done, 

God sends the varlets down ! ! 

Our King his triumph may not keep [ 

In fickle London town. \ 

But fair as e'er it grew of old 

In gardens green at Farley, 

We '11 wear to-day the Holy Rose, ^ ; 

The white rose of Prince Charlie. i 

! 

] 

We 've yet to pay for all the blood ,! 

That Naseby drank that day ; [ 

And there 's a debt of honor which, | 

As God lives, we shall pay ! j 

By right and might we '11 sweep their ranks 

As harvesters the barley, I 

Tho' loyal blood shall dye to red ' 

The white rose of Prince Charlie. j 

1 



Good Jacobites All 

The King shall come into his own, 

Reign where his father reigned ; 

And Church and State united sway 

The Kingdom new regained. 

So here 's to King ! And here 's to Cause ! 

Down on all weakling parley ! 

And here's the white rose proudly won, 

The white rose of Prince Charlie ! 

St. Charles' Day, January 30. 



24 



No Robbery 



NO ROBBERY 

SHE AND HER ROOM-MATE 

" 1\ yTERCY, child, hurry and find some hairpins 
\ I for me ! And here 's a telegram to read 
while I fix — Why will you buy those vicious straight 
wire ones that slip ? I rather think he exaggerates 
the ' whither thou goest I will go ' effect. ' Nothing 
could detain me upon receiving note.' H'm — I be- 
lieve we will see Cambridge together in June. Well, 
I only know this one Harvard man, and I 've met 
him four — five — six times, but there 's to-morrow 
afternoon, and Tuesday if I cut that Elizabethan Lit. 
Do you want to bet on my whereabouts for next 
Class-day ? Is my hair smooth now — and the rest of 
my raiment ? Please look at me before you say I 'm 
all right." 

HE AND SHE 

"And that's why things can never be the same 
between us any more. Did n't you ever feel that a 
certain day or a certain hour had made all the past 
useless and colorless, and the present and perhaps the 
future contained everything worth living for? Don't 
you think it a bit unkind to spoil a man's past so ? " 

" Heavens ! Have you a past ? Is it quite dis- 
creet of me to have anything to do with it ? " 

" Quite. But if my future never turns out a past 
you 'd like to have anything to do with, it 's going to 

25 



No Robbery 

be your own fault. And I don't think you care 
that ! " (He gazes ardently at the insane asylum 
in the distance.) 

" Not a snap of my finger ? Perhaps I care a 
little more than that, Billy, and perhaps even more 
than you think — " 

HE SOLUS LATER A BELL-BOY 

"William, shake hands with yourself. It's a very 
dirty ride from Boston, William, that 's true. But, 
William, we will go to the Junior Prom., where we 
shall see another lady who is quite worth all the 
trouble. Very creditably planned and executed, 
William. We congratulate ourself and drink to — 
Oh, is that you, Sam ? If you '11 bring four more 
of the same and set them on the bureau, I won't 
worry you any more to-night." 



26 



Master Francois Sings 



MASTER FRANgOIS SINGS 

A GIRL on my knee, a glass at my side, 
A lute to strum and a horse to ride. 
What can a man want more ? 
To lounge in the warm sun all day long. 
With jest and kiss and snatch of a song. 
To squander Youth's sweet store I 

Oh ! that is the life that seems best to me 5 
Let Fortune frown, but a shrew is she, 

And life a dream that flies. 
But ho ! for the reign of the Provence rose. 
And court-yards drifted with almond snows. 

And Fleurette's laughing eyes. 



27 



A Ragamuffin Santa Claus 



A RAGAMUFFIN SANTA CLAUS 

THE Yale fullback of '94, and now a successful 
sheep-raiser, seared and hardened by four years 
of experience, was coming East on the Lake Shore 
Limited. " 878," with its supple line of six Wag- 
ners, the plate windows and the brass glistening in 
the sun, was humming down from Albany, never 
stopping and only letting down its fifty-two-mile gait 
for the draws and the long quarter-mile stretches of 
the water-troughs, heaving heavily around the curves, 
and with added momentum gliding down the straight- 
aways. Brink, the aforementioned fullback, was sit- 
ting on a camp-stool out on the observation platform 
of the rear car, watching the rails glide from under 
him, and then gradually slow down in the distance 
until they met. It seemed as if things were slipping 
away from him in just this way, and the phrase struck 
him as rather symbolic of his present state, and kept 
ringing in his head back where the brain and the ears 
meet. The first pages of his real life had slipped 
away, and what had he gained ? Gold that could be 
reckoned in four figures, and experience, and to set 
over against this, four prime years of manhood lived 
in that part of our land which lies between our two 
civilizations, — and another loss, that of a friendship 
that could not be reckoned in four figures, nor four 
times four. He shook off the recollection with a 
start and lighted a cigar. The train had rushed by 

28 



A Ragamuffin Santa Claus 

the local, side-tracked at Poughkeepsie, and then on 
down into the gloom of the Highlands. Twilight 
had fallen; from within the car the glare from the 
electrics called to him cheerfully, invitingly, and he 
answered and stepped inside the big glass door. 

As he did so, the " Lake Shore " calendar over the 
stenographer's desk caught his eye, and it suddenly 
dawned upon him that it was the day before Christ- 
mas. In the rush of flying across a continent, he 
had lost track of time. Travelling fast and continu- 
ously seems to make a cipher of it anyhow. He 
settled himself down into one of the big chairs, and 
let his thoughts travel back along the track he had 
come for upwards of two thousand miles. Then, 
after going over all he had done out West, the hard- 
ships and dangers where a man stands face to face 
with the God who made him, he naturally thought of 
the days before he had gone. You never strike the 
same mood anywhere else, as thrills your whole being 
when you look out of a car window into the blackness 
of night and see the lights go hurrying past, some big 
blotches, others little points, like the thoughts that 
rush through your brain. Those days were to Brink 
almost part of another existence. The recollection 
of them all and of Her seemed a far-away memory, 
almost an illusive one, — something which he had 
lived through once a long while ago, but whether in 
this life or in another world he could hardly have 
told. What had become of her since he had gone 
West, he did not know ; even as to whether she was 
married or not he was uncertain. He had lost all 
trace of her, and a pang shot through him when he 
remembered it was more or less his fault. If he had 

29 



A Ragamuffin Santa Claus 

only written to her as he ought to have done, there 
would be a pair of eyes with a light in them to wel- 
come him. 

It is more or less a mocking of fate — and princi- 
pally more — to spend Christmas alone. This is 
in accordance with a man's idea of what the day 
ought to be. So with Brink, He was one of those 
who went in for ideals, and the indulgence of this 
particular kind of castle-building meant more to him 
than to most of us. So the idea of spending the day 
alone at his hotel or at a club came hard to him. 
His father and mother had died just before he went 
West, but he knew what the day ought to be — what 
it had always been before he had gone — and the 
thought of his loneliness struck across his heart and 
staggered him as never before. He had lived days 
together alone in the glorious boundlessness of the 
plains, and had slept of nights up in the hills, looking 
up in his waking moments at the infinite distances of 
the stars, and in all that had never felt himself weighted 
down by a sense of loneliness. But here, with men 
about him, rushing along at the speed of fifty-two 
miles an hour, and the lights of civilization flying by, 
he felt and knew himself to be alone. The station 
at Yonkers catching his eye, broke his day-dreaming, 
and a few minutes later the sharp swing of the train 
told him they had turned ofF into the cut. It struck 
him as peculiar how well he remembered it all, — and 
then, that there was no one to remember him. 

Fifteen minutes later he stood outside the station 
on 42d Street, watching the underground electrics 
glide down into the tunnel, and the big heavy mail- 
wagons roll past with their loads for the Pan-American 

30 



A RagamufEn Santa Claus 

Limited. His ears were ringing with the mighty 
hum of the vast city, and he remembered how he used 
to stand that way five, six, and seven years ago. Each 
time he came home from college it thrilled him to 
feel for the first time the city's thundering pulsations. 
He used to take it in slowly, for he needed hours to 
get accustomed to it after the quietness of his college 
town. Then there used to come the first glimpse of 
Broadway, the street of eternal day — or eternal night 
— it matters not which you call it. But this time he 
did n't thrill to the thousands of lives around him, — 
he did n't feel himself drawn to them by any ties in 
common ; he felt alone. Usually there is a subtle 
something in the air at Christmas that draws people 
together. There 's a peculiar cheerfulness, in quality 
though not in intensity, to the glare from the shop 
windows as it strikes across the snow, and even the 
clang of the Broadway Cables has an unaccustomed 
clearness. But it all worked on Brink in just the 
opposite way. He was strolling slowly toward Fifth 
Avenue with no purpose in view, and was absent- 
mindedly fumbling the coins in his pocket. The 
noise caught the quick ear of a newsboy, and in a 
flash of rags and half-bare legs he was at his side. 

'*• Have a paper. Boss ? Sportin' extra," and then 
with an eye to business, and noting the out-of-town 
look that Brink carried with him, he held up the 
tempting headlines of the " World " and " Journal." 
" Have a ' Woild,' Mister ? " 

Brink looked the little fellow straight between the 
eyes, and got back the steady gaze of a pair that was 
not unlike his own. Four years in the West teach a 
man to judge others at sight, and Brink could read 

31 



A Ragamuffin Santa Claus 

two eyes almost as well as he could a printed page. 
This time he looked clear through, down to the 
depths of the boy, and he saw something there that 
another might have seen in him, — a look of loneli- 
ness. The kindred of these two conditions suddenly 
suggested a plan to his mind. 

" Say, young fellow, whatever your name is, how 
would it do for you and me to go somewhere and get 
some dinner ? I 'm all alone here — and I hope 
you 're not, but perhaps we 'd be company for each 
other anyhow. It 's a beastly shame for any one to 
eat his dinner alone the night before Christmas." 

The boy's eyes opened rather wide, and he crossed 
what remained of his left shoe over his right as he 
answered, — 

" What sort of a game are yer givin' us ? I 
ain't quite next." 

" I honestly mean it," Brink answered, with a 
sincerity that went right to the boy's heart. Then 
he added, " If you would only tell me your name, I 
think we could get along better." 

" I go by der name o' Kid around this here joint, 
but me name is Charlie McGinnis." 

" Where do you live ? " 

" I ain't never had no old on's, leastwise since I 
kin remimber, so I hang out at t'irty-t'ree East 
Houston. Der Gilroys wot lives there lets me sleep 
wid dere kids if I turn in twenty-five per, if I don't 
I sleeps where I kin. But say, Mister, wot 's yer 
name ? " 

" My name is Billy Brink, and I am glad to meet 
you, Mr. McGinnis," Brink answered. He was deep 
in the spirit of the thing now, and in the doing of 

32 



^ 

A Ragamuffin Santa Claus 

a kindness toward another he was fast forgetting his 
own loneliness. 

" Now, Kid, we are going to have dinner some- 
where together, just you and I, but not till you 've 
had some new clothes and a mild exterior application 
of water." 

While he was talking he had been watching the 
boy's face. The eyes from their normal condition 
had slowly expanded until they reached their limit, 
and then the mouth followed after them. With all 
wide open, he asked in an awed sort of whisper, — 

" Say, are you ' BiiFy ' Brink, de fellar wot won 
der game for de Yales four years ago, when dey beat 
de Princetons six ter five ? " 

" I am that fellow, but I don't see how in the 
world you know anything about it," Brink answered. 

" Wellj say, mebbe I don't read der newspapers ! 
I 've been in dis here bizness seven years, an' I kin 
give yer der hull ting about dem cullige joints. But 
you 're der first guy I ever seen, and say, you 're der 
best one a-goin'. Don't I remember how dey had 
your phiz in der papers de day you done dat monkey- 
shine ? " 

Before such admiration as Brink saw on the face 
that was upturned to him two feet below his shoulder, 
he could n't say very much, only his heart thrilled 
through to think he had found at least one person 
somewhere who remembered, some link between the 
old days and the future. Not that he wanted hero 
worship ; he had become sick enough of that the last 
year at college. But he wanted some one who could 
understand him, and he found just such a one in this 
kid. It is good for a man once in a while to look 

3 33 



A Ragamuffin Santa Claus 

below his level for a comrade, especially if the one he 
finds is a child. 

An hour later a tall, well-built, and clean-limbed 
young fellow and a boy of twelve who had been 
tubbed, scrubbed, and dressed, and who still had that 
same pair of marvellous eyes, sat in a quiet corner of 
the Hotel Imperial Cafe. With the soft low music 
which floated lazily to them from the palm room, 
making familiar the unaccustomed luxury of it all, 
and the undertone of conversation pervading the 
whole room. Brink sat with his chin in his hands, 
his elbows resting on the high arms of his chair, and 
dreamed his dreams. There was a time when he had 
been used to all this, when it had been part of his 
life. The crowds of people, the suppers, and the 
theatres had seemed necessary to him. If he thought 
of the subject at all, it was that he should never get 
along without them. But life out West alters a 
man's way of looking at things. It gives him eyes 
that see and ears that hear, and Brink thanked God 
it had been so with him. It seemed good that he 
realized all this superficial way of living, and that he 
had learned to do without it. He had learned to 
live after a pattern that she would approve if she 
knew him now. She had always been above all this 
sort of thing, farther than any girl he had ever known, 
and that is what had first attracted him. Then they 
had gone out of each other's lives as two people often 
do, even when they are the best of friends. The 
miles that separate the West from the East are al- 
most too many to hold up a friendship for a long 
time. He felt as if he would give a good deal now 
to be able to go and see her and tell her how his 

34 



A Ragamuffin Santa Claus 

ideals had changed, and how in a way she had been 
the cause of it. 

" Say, Biffy, can't yer cut it short ? Ain't we 
a-goin' to eat them aisters ? " and with a leap of four 
years and anywhere from two to four thousand miles, 
Brink came back to earth. 

" I beg your pardon, Charles, they were certainly 
put here for some such purpose. But I was thinking 
of old times; and by the way. Kid, when you grow 
up, that 's one thing you want to learn to forget. 
If you don't, you will be sorry some day." 

They talked on about all the things that are under 
the sun, as a man and a boy will. The uncouth 
angles of Charlie's manner wore off as the meal grew 
long, and over the sirloin Brink told some of his old 
football experiences into two eyes that struck him 
as being the most sympathetic he had ever seen. 
Finally, when the coffee came and while Brink was 
watching the smoke of his cigar drift about the palms 
that stood at the back of their table, he asked the boy 
what he was going to do the next day. 

" Holy Moses ! " the Kid commented, sitting bolt 
upright in his chair, " if I ain't forgot the hull kit. 
There 's another layout comin' ter-morrow wot a 
young lady gives twelve of us fellars. She 's done 
it fer two Christmases, and you can jest bet yer life 
dere bully feeds. And say, BiiFy, if that girl ain't a 
corker, Hully Gee ! " 

" But what is her name ? " Brink asked, with a 
twinkle in his eye. " Jones, or Smith or — " 

" Ah, gowan, she ain't got no name like that. De 
kids all calls her Miss Helen ; but her name is Button, 
or leastwise it sounds like some such." 

35 



A Ragamuffin Santa Claus 

Brink took a firmer hold on his chair, as the room 
seemed to swim around in the soft music and the 
blur of the lights. But he was used to taking things 
coolly, and he asked in his usual way, — 

" You don't mean Miss Helen Denton, do you ? " 

" Shure ; did n't I tell you it looked like Button ? " 
Charlie replied. Then his eyes opened again in 
amazement as they had once before. " Say, BifFy, 
how did yer ever tumble ? " 

" Oh ! I used to know her," he answered quietly ; 
but somewhere inside him there was a tumult going 
on, and he felt in his chest as if it was going to burst. 
The wonder of it all amazed and awed him, so that 
he could n't reason. All he could realize was that 
the unexpected had happened. 

" So you think she 's pretty fine, do "^you ? " he 
said at last, after his wonder had partly gone and 
not knowing what he did say. 

" I could lick der fellar wot says she ain't." 
Then, " You 'd orter come too ter-morrer ; you 
ain't no other place ter go." 

"Well, Charles, I rather think I will," Brink 
said ; adding in an undertone, " For she 's the finest 
girl in the world, and I could help you, Charles, to 
lick the fellow that says she ain't." 

It was late when they said good-night, out in front 
of the hotel. Charles had walked off several feet 
when Brink called him back and looked him all over. 
Then he said simply, — 

" I want to take back what I said about forgetting 
the past. Don't ever let go of any memory that has 
a girl in it, Kid." 

36 



Nantucket 



NANTUCKET 

ADRIFT in taintless seas she dreaming lies, 
The island city, time-worn now, and gray, 
Her dark wharves ruinous, where once there lay 
Tall ships, at rest from far-sea industries. 
The busy hand of trade no longer plies 
Within her streets. In quiet court and way 
The grass has crept — and sun and shadows play 
Beneath her elms, in changing traceries ; 
The years have claimed her theirs, and the still peace 
Of wind and sun and mist, blown thick and white. 
Has folded her. The voices of the seas 
Through many a soft, bright day and brooding night 
Have wrought her silence, wide as they, and deep. 
And dreaming of the past, she waits — asleep. 



37 



The End of It 



THE END OF IT 

UP and down the village street the lights were 
fast disappearing. But the windows of the 
tavern were illumined with a ruddy glow, and from 
out the half-opened door a tipsy singing reeled and 
staggered into the cool night air. It was a decrep'c 
old building, leaning groggily backward from the street 
and sidewise toward the new brick milliner's shop 
next door, which held itself stiffly erect as if in prudish 
uneasiness lest her disreputable old neighbor should 
require assistance. And yet, for all its befuddled 
decrepitude, the old tavern seemed to have a con- 
sciousness of its own importance in village affairs and 
to be leering out of its bleary, steamy windows at the 
huddled collection of cottages around it, which shrank 
away into the protecting darkness. 

Presently a woman came out of a house a little 
way up the street, stood for a moment in the glaring 
light before the door, and then walked on with a sigh. 
But in a moment she turned and came back, and 
stood as if debating whether or not to enter. Mean- 
while the singing increased in loudness, and was fol- 
lowed by a vociferous clapping of hands and stamping 
of feet. A few rods away the waters of a mill- 
stream were pouring over a dam, and their continuous 
roar mingled strangely with the hilarious sounds of 
carousal. How doggedly imperative was the voice of 
the water, as if the stream were the spokesman of fate 

38 



The End of It 

itself, now exhorting, now entreating, now command- 
ing, now forbidding, and yet always the same monoto- 
nous roar. 

The woman shivered. Within the tavern the 
carouse gave no signs of coming to an end. At last 
the woman entered the door. 

After a moment or two the noise abated somewhat, 
and the woman's voice could be heard, urgent and 
persuasive, interrupted at first by whinings, then angry 
remonstrances, and then by imprecations. Finally 
there was a crash as of a falling table, followed by a 
scuffling of feet, and the woman appeared on the 
sidewalk pale and trembling. Still, she did not leave 
the place, but crouched in the shadow. 

And now again the roar of the waterfall was 
carried to her ears, exhorting, entreating, command- 
ing, forbidding as before. She arose, but stood in 
hesitation, listening intently. How entirely removed 
from her seemed the washings and ironings, cleanings 
and mendings, gossipings and squabblings of a few 
hours ago. It would be impossible to go back to 
that life now, — quite out of the question. The 
woman turned and walked listlessly in the direction 
whence came the sound of the stream. From their 
places in the distant heaven the outposts of the 
immortals looked down at her with aristocratic 
indifference. 



39 



Barbara 



BARBARA 

WHEN the green o' the year comes back, 
my dear, 
Comes back to the patient hills. 
And weary faith may keep again. 
True to the call of sun and rain, 
Spring's covenant, in daffodils, — 

It 's little I '11 care, though the days grow fair 
And time takes the April track — 
When the heart of Spring Is burled deep 
In the quiet place where you He asleep. 
When the green o' the year comes back. 



40 



" Greater Love Hath No Man " 



"GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN" 

" 1 '3 UT if you will pardon me, Colonel, this matter 

fl J is entirely out of your province. You have 
never married, you cannot understand. It is not a 
question of social position or of wealth. I don't see 
that it is at all a matter for discussion. It 's simply 
that I love her ; " and the younger man rose and 
knocked the ashes sharply from his pipe. 

" Yes," said the Colonel, " I believe that for the 
present at least you do love her, but I don't think 
you fully understand quite what an important step 
this is in your Hfe. You have n't spoken to her as 
yet ? " queried the elder man, anxiously. 

"No, not definitely, but I think we understand 
each other. I am to call to-night, and I hope — " 

" Precisely," said the Colonel, with a sigh of relief. 
" Now all I ask of you. Bob, is that you take time 
to know your own mind. Time is the only register 
we have of love's depth, and while you are proving 
your love for her you can test her love for you." 

" I need no proof of the one, I would not test the 
other except by her answer," said Wayne, proudly. 

The Colonel smiled, half in indulgence, half in 
admiration. "When your father died," he con- 
tinued, " he intrusted you to my care. As a boy 
you won the love of all your associates. Your 
career at college so far as I know was hke most 
young men of your position. You have never given 

41 



"Greater Love Hath No Man" 

me any trouble. Sometimes I have even felt that 1 
was not keeping my promise to your father very 
well, because I let you carry out a good many notions 
of your own which in themselves were unwise, 
merely that you should come to depend on yourself. 
Soon you will have grown beyond me, and acting as 
I am trying to, for your own good, I wish you might 
respect this, my last wish. Wait a month, wait a 
year. Understand that you must love this girl better, 
and be willing to do more for her than you would 
for your own self. Understand that it means the 
total abandonment of your free-and-easy life. You 
cease to consult merely your own wishes and pleas- 
ures. For a while even the club will be out of the 
question. 

" Most people are selfish, and you will find it very 
hard to change a life to which you have been accus- 
tomed for almost thirty years, unless you get in re- 
turn the best love a woman can give. Your name, 
your wealth, make you a desirable husband, from a 
worldly standpoint alone. Miss Kent is nothing if 
not worldly, and you know yourself that her position 
in society, the training of her whole life, would lead 
her to marry for convenience rather than love." 

Wayne rose with a little gesture of despair. " It 
is very hard," he said quickly. " I appreciate your 
affection for me. I know you are looking to my 
best interests, and you purposely make it very hard 
for me to refuse you." The young man leaned on 
the mantelpiece and gazed out through the club 
window. Outside the lights were beginning to 
twinkle cheerfully. He stood there for some mo- 
ments, scowling moodily out upon the busy panorama 

42 



"Greater Love Hath No Man 



» 



before him. The Colonel noted his advantage and 
remained silent. Suddenly Wayne wheeled sharply 
around. 

" I want you to understand," he said, " that I am 
obeying you merely out of respect for you, and not 
because I admit that your course is wiser or better 
for me. I think you are wholly wrong." 

The elder man nodded. " You will have to go 
away," he said meditatively, " and I think — yes, 
it will do you good to go out and inspect your mines 
in Colorado. It will give you some idea of the 
extent of your own property and the labor you 
control. Your mind will be healthier when you 
return." The Colonel glanced at his watch. 

" Send your man right over to pack your trunks," 
he continued; "you can just comfortably make the 
ten o'clock limited." 

" And my engagement for this evening ? '* 

" Is the last thing I want you to keep. Send 
your regrets immediately. Urgent business has called 
you out of town. You don't expect to be back for 



some time." 



That night Wayne gazed moodily out upon the som- 
bre Hudson, and wondered grimly whether the Colonel 
had been as merciless in war. 

After almost a year's absence in the far West a 
dinner at the club is an especial luxury. So Wayne 
thought as he lingered over his coffee. He was 
feeling especially satisfied with himself in the knowl- 
edge of having done something and done it well, 
and of having conquered himself and for the time 
being set aside his own wishes. It did seem that 



"Greater Love Hath No Man" 

the Colonel was right, after all. His mines had 
interested him immensely. He had spent a good 
deal of labor and thought on them, and his efforts 
had succeeded far beyond his hopes. As for Miss 
Kent — well, it is harder for love to find entrance 
into the life of a busy man, and though absence may 
throw a halo about certain memories, still, memories 
will fade and — 

Wayne was musing over his cigar ; just now he 
was thinking how good it seemed to be back in New 
York, and to see his old haunts once more. He 
rejoiced in the possession of numerous friends who 
he knew cared for him and who would be glad to see 
him. In the cafe several women had nodded brightly 
to him. The pompous head waiter beamed kindly 
upon him. Even the soft, mellow lights around him 
seemed to blink a lazy welcome to him. Yet, as he 
sat there thinking, he grew uneasy. In spite of 
himself a certain face would keep appearing before 
his eyes. " It 's no use, old man," he said to him- 
self. " Might just as well stop wishing. Nobody 's 
in town in August." Just then Randall rushed up. 

" Mighty glad to see you. Bob ; we Ve missed 
you wonderfully. How 've you been ? No, much 
obliged, can't stop now. Yachting party coming up 
from Newport ; got to order dinner and dress. Say, 
can't you join us ? About nine I should say. 
That 's good. Helen Kent is to be there, and, of 
course. Sir Henry Linton. Biggest catch of the 
season. Well, see you later ; don't forget." 

Wayne sank back in his chair. " And, of course, 
Sir Henry Linton." The light hurt his eyes, the 
room seemed very close. He rose and walked slowly 

44 



" Greater Love Hath No Man " 

out of the club and down the avenue toward his 
rooms. Someway he longed for the plains of Colo- 
rado where he could see for miles and miles. For a 
long time he sat in his rooms looking very gravely at 
a picture he held in his hand, and occasionally address- 
ing it. As it was, he was late at the club. His face 
betrayed no emotion as he took his seat next Miss Kent. 

Their greeting was that of people who had come 
to know each other well in a purely worldly way. 
Across from them sat Sir Henry Linton, a distin- 
guished looking man, rather well on in years, with a 
kindly expression on his face which was irresistible. 
From time to time he smiled knowingly and rather 
gravely at Miss Kent. The latter was especially 
brilliant ; she talked of everything — anything, and 
the dinner was half over before Wayne had a chance 
to defeat her too evident purpose in so doing. Then 
he leaned over toward her. 

" You have changed," he said, " and — I am sorry, 
because," he continued, " I came here to-night 
especially to see you and to tell you something. It 
was a little unfinished story which has been on my 
mind for some time, and which I wanted you to 
finish. Your demeanor to-night tells me that the 
ending would not be a happy one, and yet I wish 
for my own peace of mind that I might tell it to 
you." 

" How very romantic ! " she said. " Of course 
you may. I will try not to disappoint your expecta- 
tions as to the ending." 

*' It is very short," he began. " A young man 
whom I knew intimately, grew to care very much 
for a certain girl, and she was especially kind to him. 

45 



"Greater Love Hath No Man " 

Finally he decided to tell her that he loved her, but 
one of his very best friends advised him to wait — 
to go away — in short, to test the girl's love. So the 
young man went away, much against his wishes ; and 
when he returned several things told him that the 
girl did not love him, in fact had grown to care for 
another man. Now — " 

" It seems to me," she broke in, " that your friend 
is rather too weak and impossible to be the hero of a 
story. As I knew him, he played a very different 
role, especially towards the end. Shall I tell you 
what I know of him ? " He nodded silently. 

" Mine is not a pretty story," she began, " and it 
is especially hard for me to tell it to you. A girl 
who had lived always in the whirl of a social life, 
and who had been taught that friendships were 
merely maintained in so far as they were a means to 
an end, and that all life was but a game of give and 
take, of which a strict account must be kept ; in 
short, a girl who had never been taught to consider 
her heart, came to know and to like a certain man. 

" She liked him because he was so unselfish — 
because he cared for her, for herself alone. He was 
a man whom any girl could love, and he was very 
devoted. There could be only one result. Then, 
just as their friendship was budding into love — just 
as the world began to take on a new and happy light 
for her — he went away. 

" For some time she continued to believe in him, 
then, as month after month went by, she learned that 
he was only one of a great many young men who 
have been bred to look down upon that which is low 
and vulgar, and who turn for their amusement to 

46 



" Greater Love Hath No Man 



» 



girls of their own class, and gain favors and privileges 
from these girls by promises they never expect to 
keep — by all manner of w^hite society lies — w^hose 
greatest pleasure is in overcoming some girl, in spoil- 
ing w^hat few good ideals she has, and then leav- 
ing her for fields untried, unconquered." She had 
spoken impulsively and very earnestly ; but when she 
paused there was a little droop about her mouth, and 
a look almost of helplessness in her eyes. 

" Is that all ? " said Wayne, harshly. She threw 
her head back, then let it fall wearily forward. 

" No," she said softly. " No, a man came who 
offered her everything, everything but love, and in 
place of that honor and devotion." 

" And she took it ? " he said dully. 

" May God forgive her, yes," she answered. 

They rose from the table ; seemingly no one had 
noticed them, yet Sir Henry was no longer smiling* 
Wayne's face was set and expressionless. He made 
his way through the diners out on to one of the little 
balconies overlooking the park. He saw the happy 
little lights strung so regularly along the avenues — 
of his past life ; then he turned, and in the gloomy 
vistas of the park he saw his future. 

She had slipped on a long white cloak. " I came," 
she said, " to say good-night, and perhaps — " 

" Good-night," he said. 

Her eyes filled with tears. " Have you no mercy ? " 
she said ; " I spoke hastily to-night. I was unjust 
to you and to myself, and I have come to say that I 
am sorry." 

She paused, but Wayne was still silent. She 
raised her head with an effort. " If I must go I 

47 



" Greater Love Hath No Man '* 

want always to think of you as a very dear friend. 
I have wronged you. Say you forgive me." She 
stretched out her arms toward him. 

" Don't," he said fiercely. " I can't hear you 
blame yourself." He took her hands impulsively in 
his. In another moment she was sobbing like a 
child in his arms. 

Unnoticed by them a third figure had stepped 
through the window. It was Sir Henry. He 
stopped abruptly, with one hand on the casement ; 
the other hand closed slowly and his shoulders 
straightened. Twice he started to speak. 

" Pardon me," he said. 

Wayne drew back, but kept his arm defiantly about 
Miss Kent. Then slowly his hands sank to his 
sides. But Sir Henry was not looking at him. 

He spoke slowly. " Is this the other man you 
told me of. Miss Kent ? " 

She nodded silently. 

" And — and do you love him ? " 

Her only answer was a sob. For some few 
moments Sir Henry was silent, looking first at 
Wayne and then at her. His face was very white. 

" Yes, it is best," he said softly. " I am growing 
old, and she loves him." Then aloud : " Life itself 
is too full of tragedies for people of your age to be 
making them. There have been several in my Hfe, 
although never one just like this, but it is better that 
I should bear it than you." Gently, like a father, he 
stooped and kissed her. 

"Good-night," he said. "May the best of this 
life be yours always." 

" I can't — you must n't," broke in Wayne. 

48 



" Greater Love Hath No Man" 

" It is not for you," said Sir Henry, coldly ; and 
then before they could stop him he had stepped 
through the window and was gone. 

Going through the lobby, they met the Colonel, 
who immediately and forcibly remarked that he 'd be 
damned ; which remark, even as events turned out, 
was undoubtedly true. 



49 



On Board the ** Golden Swallow'' 



ON BOARD THE « GOLDEN SWALLOW " 

A. D. 17 

NOT two days out from the Spanish Isles, 
With the wind a-beam and fast, 
Skimmed the " Golden Swallow," plunder-piled, 
And the Black Flag at her mast. 

Young Joris climbed to a rum-cask high — 
In the midst of the lounging throng. 

Flashed a smile through his bearded lips, 
And trolled a catch of a song. 

" Ho ! for the path that the gray gull flies, 
The wake o'er the western sea — - 

Up with the anchor and trim the sails 
And out to the open free ! 

'' And here to harry, and there to spoil 

Of booty, of gems or gold. 
No palace so strong nor fortress stanch 

As to daunt the pirates bold ! 

" The weakling lords in their moated halls 

Grow suddenly pale for fear, 
Madre de Dios ! their good wine flows 

In pledge to the buccaneer ! 

SO 



On Board the " Golden Swallow " 

" There *s naught so sweet as a young maid's lip ! 

Or better than good old rum, 
Wine, maids and gold, for the pirate bold, 

A fig for the Kingdom Come ! " 

And out to the west from the Spanish Isles, 

With the wind a-beam and fast. 
Skimmed the " Golden Swallow " plunder-piled 

And the Black Flag at her mast ! 



51 



A Stampede 



A STAMPEDE 

FOR several weeks the cowboys making up the 
" Double X " outfit had been gathering three- 
year-old steers for the fall market. The results were 
as pretty a bunch of cattle as could be found in 
Texas; four thousand five hundred of them, and 
every one fat and in perfect condition. The wagon 
was camped for the night in the valley of White 
Deer Creek, two miles from the bluffs along the 
Canadian. Three more days would see the bunch 
safely packed in trains on their way to the Chicago 
market, so that it was most important that they 
should be kept from running an ounce of fat oft in 
stampede. So far they had been handled as easily 
as sheep, and the outfit was proud of itself. 

The men had finished the evening pork and beans, 
and were saddling and staking out their horses for 
night guard. Over the buttes back of the Canadian, 
a bank of black clouds was rapidly covering the 
whole western horizon. Like the distant roaring of 
an old bull preparing for battle, angry mutterings of 
thunder could be heard, while the fitful lightning 
flashes showed the yellow flood of the great river 
lashed into white caps. All the signs pointed to a 
nasty night, and Cal Merchant, the foreman of the 
outfit, gathered his men together at the tail of the 
wagon, where the sweep of the wind was broken. 

52 



A Stampede 

*' Boys," said he, " there 's trouble ahead of us. 
We 're in for a hell of a storm, and I want you all to 
remember that the bunch of red beauties out there 
has got to be held together if it tal^es every horse and 
every man in the outfit to do it. As soon as they 
break loose, there 's eighty thousand dollars gone to 
the devil, 'cause every one of 'em will run over the 
bluffs into the Canadian. Remember, turn em' into 
the sand hills if they start to run. We '11 double the 
guard so that every man stands twice for an hour at a 
time. First guard had better go out now." 

As the crowd was breaking up, Joe, the horse 
wrangler, commonly known as "The Kid," timidly 
said : " Cal, ain't you goin' to let me help hold 'em ? 
I 've got Pinto saddled, and I reckon he can run 
around any steer in the Panhandle." 

"All right. Kid," was the reply, " if you 're so 
keen to try, turn out with the third guard." 

The promised storm came, and came with a fury that 
bent the cottonwoods along the creek bottom almost 
flat, and blew the embers of the dying fire in a long, 
red stream up the valley. After the wind, came the 
rain hissing through the dried buffalo grass, which 
cringed and writhed like a monster cowering under 
the stinging blows from some giant's hand. The 
cattle stood huddled together with heads to the 
ground, all facing away from the storm, only held 
from drifting with it by the shouts and yells of the 
men who rode up and down before the line of sullen, 
lowered horns. 

In this fashion the hours dragged slowly by till the 
third guard came on. Each moment the cattle be- 
came more and more restless. Occasionally some 

53 



A Stampede 

steer would make a dash through the line for free- 
dom, only to be turned in again after a mad run of 
a hundred yards. By this time every man in the 
outfit was on his horse riding around the bunch. 

It was the Kid's first experience with " snaky " 
cattle, and as he climbed on to Pinto, a white and 
pink spindle-legged Mexican pony, and settled him- 
self deep in the saddle, he resolved to show the boys 
that he was as good a cowpuncher as any of them. 
Taking his place in the circle next to Cal, he rode 
slowly up and down the restless, ever-changing line. 
It was cold work after the first glow of excitement 
died away, and his hands grew so numb from the 
lashing of the rain that he could hardly keep his grasp 
on the bridle. After what seemed to him an infinite 
age of waiting came the long expected. A bolt of 
lightning crashed its way from the blackness above. 
Ripping down through a cottonwood, it disappeared 
into the trembling earth. Almost before the Kid 
could gather his reeling senses, came a hoarse, wild 
shout from Cal, " They 're loose, boys ! Get after 
'em ! " The whole herd of cattle, stark mad from 
fear, was flying down the valley towards the bluffs 
and to certain destruction. 

A fierce, deep excitement took hold of the Kid. 
Forgetting the dangers from the uneven ground and 
the grinding hoofs, he gave Pinto quirk and spur, 
urging him to the front of the flying column. Cal 
had told him to turn them from the bluff, and turn 
them he would, if Pinto's legs could do it. He lost 
all fear as he raced along by the stampeding cattle. 
Pinto seemed to skim the earth as he settled into his 
long racing stride, and the Kid, trusting all things to 

54 



A Stampede 

his horse, threw away the reins. He was barely con- 
scious of bogs and gullies jumped in the wild race ; 
of other men who shouted to him as he flew by, 
words which blurred senselessly in his brain. The 
glaring eyes and tossing sea of horns so close to his 
left hand had no terror for him, all his thought was 
to reach and turn the leaders in time to save them. 
Behind him beat the merciless hoofs as, on a long 
diagonal, he cut in before the herd ; ahead were the 
jagged bluffs of the Canadian. Now he was almost 
even with the leaders, but he could hear above the 
thunder of the galloping cattle, the roar of the Cana- 
dian on its rocks. Slowly, slowly, however, the 
leaders were turning to the left into the sand hills. 
The sight of the hatless, yelling devil on a white 
pony ahead of them was worse than the unknown 
terror behind. 

• ••■•••• 

The men of the Double X outfit don't care to talk 
of the stampede on White Deer, for they all liked the 
Kid. They found him next day under Pinto, at the 
bottom of a crevasse leading to the river. He had 
saved the herd by the narrow margin of twenty yards, 
but Pinto was running free and did not turn with the 
cattle. 

The company, however, paid its usual five per 
cent dividend that fall. 



5S 



Cervera at Annapolis 



CERVERA AT ANNAPOLIS ^ 

THEY crowded round to see him, great and small, i 

The conquered admiral of a conquered fleet, j 

Shorn of his glories, thrown from his high seat, ' 

Great by the very greatness of his fall. J 

Hope, fortune, honor, lost beyond recall, 1 

Gray-haired and bitter-hearted ; doomed to meet 1 

His country's censure, sharper than defeat, 'i 

His foeman's pity — that was worst of all. .'" 

\ 

He heard them faintly, as one hears, amuse, i 

Amid his vision voices far away j 

That call him from sad dreams to sadder day ; 1 

ft 

For he was where he would be could he choose, J 

At peace beneath the waters of the bay it 

Where all his ships lay silent, with their crews. ;) 



56 



Advice 



ADVICE 

SOME one gave Tommy a nice, shiny dime. 
Lollipop visions floated through Tommy's 
head. 

" Tommy, you must put the money the kind gen- 
tleman gave you in your new bank," said Tommy's 
Aunt Jemima. 

Duty, that Dread Power, began chasing out the 
visions, as Aunt Jemima did the hens with her broom 
from the front garden. And they came back just as 
the hens always did when Aunt Jemima's back was 
turned. Nature in her lesser creations sets the poor 
moral animal a shocking example. 

But the dime slipped through the slot — rather 
slowly — Aunt Jemima superintending. 

This did not end the battle necessarily. Duty 
usually won the first skirmish. There was a way — 
a skilful inversion of the bank — by which the dime 
might be brought back again under the laws of supply 
and demand ; it had been tried before in cases of ex- 
treme pressure and great financial stringency. But 
detection was sure sooner or later. 

So, really, the conflict was but just begun. On 
one side there were the visions aforementioned ever 
increasing in their sugary seductiveness ; and on the 
other side, supplementing the Dread Power, whose 
prestige began to wane when her earthly representa- 
tive was no longer at hand, other visions — confine- 

57 



Advice 

ment to the society of one's bedchamber furniture for 
twenty-four hours; and then, perhaps more remote, a 
midnight call from the family physician with the con- 
comitant unpleasantness — for a dime, if expended in 
a candy shop with the thrifty prudence (I speak ad- 
visedly) of seven years old, can do wonders. 

I do not know which side carried off the laurels. 
A cynical person might say that it mattered little, 
there being something to be gained and something to 
be lost in either case. But you can read as much of a 
moral, or of an immoral, into this as you choose. I 
merely relate the situation as one capable of being 
reflected upon. 



S8 



Sacrament 



SACRAMENT 

GOWL'D deep in mist the great hills kneeled, 
While on the East's high-altar bright, 
The Host of Dawn lay, full revealed. 
In the clear monstrance of the Light. 



59 



His Son's Enemies 



HIS SON'S ENEMIES 

AT a small table in a cafe of a low order, on one 
of the many side streets that lead down to the 
Seine, near the morgue, sat Jean Coqulard. His body 
was slouched forward, and his long muscular hands 
clasped before him, in what a careless passer-by might 
call an attitude of prayer. But his eyes looked 
straight ahead in a peculiar, hard, vacant stare. Few, 
if any, noticed him, and if they did, probably judged 
him from his dress to be an old habitue of the place, 
and there more on sufferance than anything else. 
The room was thick with cheap tobacco smoke, 
which the wind, when the street door was opened, 
carried across the place in little whirlwinds. The 
lights from many cigarettes showed dimly like glow- 
worms in the dense air. At the other end of the 
room some one was playing a mandolin and singing in 
a maudlin voice. 

The kerosene lamps had begun to smoke at this 
late hour, and the people passing in and out seemed 
out of proportion, and like the fantastic shadows cast 
on the roadside at night by the side lamps of a dog- 
cart. Jean saw none of these things. He was think- 
ing of the journey he had just taken to the great 
prison outside the city walls, where low malefactors 
were confined for short terms and worse ones received 
a five or six years' sentence. 

Jean's son was one of the latter. For repeated 
small crimes he had at last been sentenced for four 

60 



His Son's Enemies 

years, and his father had seen him enter the great 
iron-barred gates of the prison, very much as he 
would see him enter his workshop in the morning, 
knowing that a certain time must elapse, a necessary 
evil, before the evening would free him to wander 
once more in his old haunts. His sentence expired 
that evening, and he had gone to get him, but was in- 
formed that on the day before his son had died of 
some disease, whose unfamiliar name he could not 
remember, and that a Mass had been said for the 
repose of his soul, and he was now number 4761 in 
the prison graveyard. The warden actually congratu- 
lated Jean on his good fortune. " No one like that, 
that son of yours, ever comes to any good. I have 
been here twelve years and can tell. A fellow of his 
particular stamp never reforms. Perhaps Monsieur has 
other better sons ? Yes ? " But Jean did not answer 
him, but walked back to the cafe like one in a dream. 
So his son was dead, his little Henri, who was such 
a fine fellow, no better company than he ; and now 
he was dead. He could imagine how he had died, 
there in the prison, alone, with none of his friends 
around him, looking out longingly, perhaps, out of 
the little iron-barred window, out over the plain 
where the soldiers drilled, to the walls of the city, 
where the lights twinkled, and where the great Eiffel 
Tower rose straight and slim, like a great exclamation 
point out of the flat page of the city. He sat and 
thought and lived over again their lives which had 
been so entwined, thought how as a little fellow he 
had carried him in his arms of a Sunday to the Bois 
to see the crowd, or gone with him on one of the 
little steamers that go up and down the Seine, and 

61 



His Son*s Enemies 

when he was older how often they had spent the even- 
ing together in some place of amusement. Yes, how 
often at that cafe and at that very table. But Henri 
had a weakness, — was always taking little things that 
were not his, and repeated offences had finally gotten 
him this last sentence. Each time he had promised to 
reform, but as often slipped from his good intentions. 
The old story. 

A great wave of anger overcame Jean; an un- 
reasonable rage that longed to cry out, to bite, to tear 
with the hands. What right had the officials to take 
his son from him, to kill him like a rat in a trap out 
there beyond the city walls ? He seized the bottle of 
cognac that stood before him on the table, and drank 
the remaining half without stopping. He smiled ; a 
feeling of warmth came over him, and a numbness so 
that the people talking round him seemed a great 
way off. He rose, saying to himself: "Now I know 
the way. Now all will go well." 

He went out and walked toward the Seine, which ran 
black and oily at the lower end of the street. He came 
to the edge and, leaning over the low railing, looked 
into the water where the ripples made the reflection 
of the gas-lamp above him waver and seem to beckon 
to him. He heard a step approaching; a gendarme 
gorgeous in his blue and red uniform was making his 
rounds, a comelv young fellow, who whistled softly 
to himself as he looked out over the water, thinking 
perhaps of his mother in her little home in the Prov- 
inces, to whom he was to send half his pay when he 
received it at the end of the month. 

Jean watched him and, as he did, the wave of 
anger came over him again. So this was one of the 

^ 62 



His Son's Enemies 

crew that had taken his son to that place to die. 
This was one of those who had robbed him of his little 
Henri. Well, he would show them. He — 

Two days later, far down the Seine, where the 
fishing-boats from Havre anchor by the shores fringed 
with tall Lombardy poplars, something red and blue 
floated in mid-stream, face downwards. And an old 
man jibbered and gnawed at his hands in a cell, from 
the windows of which could be seen the plain where 
the soldiers drill, stretching away to the walls of the 
city, where the lights twinkled and the great tower 
rose dimly through the darkness. For Jean Coqulard 
was mad. 



63 



Nox Christ! 



NOX CHRISTI 

A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY 

PERSONS. 

Mater, Josephus, Pastor Primus, Pastor Secundus, 

Angeli 

Scene. — The Stable in Bethlehem. 

Mater, — 

THE winter night is bleak and wild, 
Yet one great star burns clear. 
What aileth thee, my little child, 

Thus crying out in fear, 
What aileth thee, that thou shouldst weep? 
See ! I will sing, and thou wilt sleep. 

[Here shall she sing : 
What gift shall the great ones bring ? 
What gift for their new-born king ? 
Red, red gold their gift shall be, 
Fine tried gold for royalty. 

What gift shall the maidens bring ? 
What gift for their new-born king ? 
Richly wrought embroideries 
Of golden thread on peacock dyes. 

What gift shall the people bring ? 
What gift for their new-born king ? 

[ The child wails again, 
64 



Nox Christi 

Mater, Thy Mother watches, little child, 

And safe upon her breast 
Fear thou no hurtful thing or wild, 

But sleep and take thy rest; 
My Royal One, my Holy One, 

Thou child of God, my little son ! 

\Here shall enter JosEPHUS. 

yosephus. The inn is full, we must abide 
Within this stable-place. 
Ah ! What is this lies at thy side ? 
It is the child of grace ! 

\ITe worships. 

Hail ! Thou of angels' prophecy, 

Hail ! Christ-child born our king to be ! 

^Angeli heard as afar off, 

Angeli, In terra pax et hominibus voluntas! 

Josephus, Lord, is it thus Thou com'st to reign 
In such humility ? 
On cushions soft Thou shouldst have lain, 
Be clothed with majesty. 
Mater, Rough swaddling-clothes must be Thy 

wear, 
Josephus, Thy throne, this manger rude and bare. 

Angeli, HosANNA ! HosANNA ! Amen ! 

\Here shall he heard without^ Pastores, 

Pastores, Star-led come we o'er weald and wold, 
We may not stop nor stay. 
We seek the king so long foretold. 
His star hath led the way. 
5 6s 



Nox Christi 

Primus, See, it hath stopped ! Here hath it led ! 
Secundus. What ! Here, our king ? This stable-shed ! 
^Here shall enter Pastores, They stand amazed. 

We find no king, but gently laid 
Midst soft-eyed kine and mild, 

We see a simple mother-maid 
Smile o'er a little child. 

A little child ! It cannot be 

That he hath come to set us free ! 

Angeli, HosANNA \ Hosanna ! In excelsis, gloria ! 

Primus, Kneel, brother, kneel ! For this is He ; 

We have not sought in vain. 
Secundus, When angels worship, shall not we ? 

O Little King, long reign ! 
Both, The Angels* song we raise again. 

Sing, In excelsis, gloria. 

^And here subjolneth all. 
Amen ! 



^6 



An Obscure Heroine 



AN OBSCURE HEROINE 

THEY were dining at Parker's, It was elevea 
o'clock, and the Boy was trying not to 
appear sleepy. 

The big plumes of the actress' hat drooped be- 
tween her eyes and the light that fell from many little 
chandeliers. But in the seclusion of the shadow her 
gaze was even more lustrous than before, and the 
Boy, as he looked, dreamed that they were the eyes 
of a leopard. Soft feathers and long eyelashes make 
an intricate labyrinth and a very mazy jungle. 

Making an effort, the Boy straightened up. 

*' Julie," he said. 

" Mm — hm ? " said the actress, lifting her brows. 

" You have beautiful eyes." 

" Mm — hm." The brows descended. 

After a pause : 

" Julie." 

" Mm — hm ? " toying with her champagne glass. 

" I wish — I wish you would n't — would n't wear 
that costume any more." 

The actress pursed her lips and shrugged her 
shoulders. 

" Business," she said. 

" But," objected the Boy, " don't you see how it 
is ? that it 's different with us — that we 've met so 
often — that — hang it, Julie, that I love you ? " 

The hat plumes rose and showed hungry eyes. 

67 



An Obscure Heroine 



(C 



Say that again," she whispered fiercely. 

" I love you," repeated the Boy, more firmly. " I Ve 
got a ranch out in Texas, twenty thousand head of 
cattle and all that — whole outfit, you know. The 
Gov'nor gave it to me last Christmas.'* 

He leaned forward with both elbows on the table, 
his head between his palms. 

" Say you '11 go," he whispered. 

But the actress was silent, and the nodding plumes 
concealed twin tears. 

" Say you '11 go," reiterated the Boy. 

" I '11 go," she said, looking up. " But it is early. 
Order another bottle." And because she spoke so, 
the Boy was blind and could not see that there was 
Self-Denial in her face, and that the twin tears were 
no longer those of Joy. 

He turned to the waiter. The actress reached 
out over his half-empty glass. There fell from a 
locket on her wrist a little pellet, which fizzed and 
dissolved. 

They clinked glasses and drank. 

Presently the Boy mumbled dizzily : " Why don't 
we go ? I '11 order the cab." 

" Yes — do so," said the actress. 

But his eyes were heavy — closed. She smiled 
and rose. 

" Take him to the Union Club when he wakes up," 
she said to the attendant at the door. 

And her face was radiant as she passed out into the 
noise and electric glare of the street, and the twin 
tears twinkled like two stars. 



6S 



They Say her Face is Passing Fair 



THEY SAY HER FACE IS PASSING 
FAIR 

THEY say her face is passing fair — 
And this her soul exemplifies — 
But, blinded by some passion's snare, 
I looked — and only saw her eyes. 

They say her eyes are ocean's blue, 

Nor fain would I their words condemn. 

For never have I marked their hue — 
But only saw herself in them. 



69 



The Shadow of the God 



THE SHADOW OF THE GOD 

WHITMAN sat on the veranda and looked 
vacantly ofF toward the dull glow in the 
west. Twilight in (Yucatan is no time to discuss 
mathematics, and, with a young lady in a great arm- 
chair only a few feet away, it is sacrilege. Still, that 
was the subject of the conversation. 

" How absurd ! So you really think women are 
poor mathematicians ? " 

It was a hard question, but Whitman was not the 
man to flinch. He had sedulously avoided girls ever 
since he could remember, and could speak to them 
with a frankness which the average person might 
envy. 

If he was sitting only four yards away from one 
now, the Fates knew it was n't his fault. Two 
months before, at the invitation of Senor Cortez, he 
had come down to gather data for his father's great 
work on " The Ancient Ruins of Yucatan," and no 
one had been more surprised than he to find that 
the hospitable household already entertained Tom 
Wakely, of college memories, and Tom's uncle and 
fair cousin. Tom was gunning, his uncle was 
entomologizing, and Miss Ethel — girls seem to 
have no serious purpose in life anyway. 

All this explains how he could say bravely that 
mathematics seemed to be for men and poetry for 
women, 

fo 



The Shadow of the God 

This was too much, and Miss Ethel spoke out 
impatiently : " Poetry ! pshaw ! Some day I think 
I can show you that it 's just the other way round." 

Just then Tom, who sat ofF in a corner, with his 
chair tilted at a most remarkable angle, broke in 
with : " Oh, let up on this ; " — the mathematics had 
never been kind to him — " day after to-morrow we 
are going to leave Will here, digging around in the 
ruins, and you '11 probably never see him again ; don't 
get him all worked up. By the way, I 've made all 
the arrangements for our visit to the temple of 
Huetzilopochtli to-morrow — " 

" Mercy ! " interrupted Miss Ethel, hands at ears. 
" — and also," he continued, " I have learned all 
about it from the Don. You wanted to know 
about those Edgar Allan Poe human sacrifices they 
used to have. Here 's the story. People from all 
around the country used to go there, and a good many 
of course were of the very pious kind, who hung 
around in the temple, worshipping like sixty till all 
of a sudden they found that the water was beginning 
to rise. This used to take place about supper-time, 
and by that time a big obelisk outside had thrown a 
shadow clear across the doorway. Well, this shadow 
was a consecrated shadow — some sun-god business 
— and to cross it was a horrible sacrilege. But the 
people inside did n't know anything about the shadow, 
ten to one; and if they did, it was n't any use; 
they had stayed so late. Out they would rush, and 
the priests tended to the rest. In that way they 
satisfied Maya scruples and Aztec requirements. 
About a hundred years ago the Don lost an ancestor 
that way, and the old place has since been sacked, 

71 



The Shadow of the God 

and gone to rack and ruin ; but no one has been 
down there for a century, and it would be nineteenth- 
century enterprise to go down, count skeletons, and 
bring away the temple in our pockets, with some 
good lies and kodak-pictures." 

The old Spanish clock downstairs was striking 
eleven when Whitman retired that night ; but the 
incessant clatter of the countless insects which make 
hideous a tropic night, was more conducive to reverie 
than to sleep. Airy visions floated in through the 
window, and he was annoyed to see that every one 
contained the graceful, girlish form he knew so well. 
Probably it was because she was going away so soon, 
but he felt that it was unworthy of his manly heart. 
Still, she was a remarkable girl and had sailed through 
Vassar in a halo of mathematical glory, with the 
special commendation of Maria Mitchell ; and he 
had a soft place in his heart for any one who courted 
the mathematics. On the whole, he was ashamed 
of such weakness and tried to imagine the phantom 
forms less fair; and, failing in this, began to long 
for potassium bromide, and ended up by counting 
sheep jumping over a stile. It was no use; it 
was n't possible to get to sleep that way ; and, be- 
sides, there was a sheep who proved to be Monte- 
zuma, last emperor of the Aztecs ; and he wished to 
extract his young friend's heart in the good old 
Aztec fashion; for as far as he — Montezuma — 
could see, he had no use for it. Then Miss Ethel 
— for it was she — said the square on the hypothe- 
nuse was a circle — It was six when he awoke, 
and the horses were ready. It was a fine cold 
winter day, with prospect of the thermometer stop- 

72 



The Shadow of the God 

ping at seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit. The old 
Spaniard was to escort them the first mile, and he 
rode off ahead with Miss Ethel. 

The dew sent tiny javelins of light hither and 
thither, and the perfume of the forest was a whole 
Arabia and Cathay. If there is one thing rarer than 
a day in June, it is a day in Yucatan. 

" Fine old fellow," quoth Thomas, nodding ahead 
at the old Spaniard. " So she is," answered Whit- 
man, showing that his thoughts were not on temples, 
which in most languages are of anything but femi- 
nine gender. " You 'd better drop the ' s,' old man. 
You know you once said the nineteenth letter of the 
English alphabet was a barbarous superfluity. She 
is n't old, you know ; why, only — well, log 2.30 1 030, 
which is the same as not telling you." 

" The characteristic is characteristic of you ; make 

it 3." 

" She won't thank you for that, and I '11 tell." 

"'She' be hanged!" 

" Hope not, William. She likes you Immensely, 
only you 're such an old mathematical fossil. To 
be grave, here 's a piece of sound advice. Be a fossil 
all you want, only, when the time comes to act 
don't stand like a stump as most fossils do. Other- 
wise — good-by to the ladies. Really, unless you 
sober down from your sines and cosines, she can 
never — " 

Here the old Spaniard came riding back, and a 
tournament was prevented. They had now turned 
into a by-path, remarkably well defined considering 
that it led only to a disused temple and had been 
barely saved from complete erasion by the nature of 

73 



The Shadow of the God 

the ground. Great bars of sunlight streamed through 
the trees here and there, and stood out against the 
woodland shadows like veins of silver in a coal- 
measure. Hither and thither darted humming-birds 
and orioles, and once a magnificent trogon swept 
across the sunlight, trailing its gorgeous rainbow 
behind it. 

A mottled snake writhed across the path, and 
everywhere were abundant life and the glory of early 
morning. 

It was well on in the day when they trotted out 
on the plateau where the temple lay, sleeping in the 
sun; for it is not wise to hurry in latitude twenty 
degrees, even in winter. At the end of a long street, 
lined on either side by great rough monoliths, was 
the temple, a conical hill, hewn into terraces, and 
overgrown with the radiant leaves of the yucca. All 
underneath was the great cavern, with carved and 
painted walls, and mighty altars long since cold. A 
broad stone porch, high as a man's shoulders, and 
furnished at both sides with a parapet, stood out 
from the front of the temple ; and on the western 
parapet to their right stood a short pillar like an 
inverted Egyptian obelisk minus its apex. The 
whole west face of the structure rose straight from 
the sombre waters of a little lake, in whose depths 
the pillar was mirrored clear and bright. 

The doorway opened out on the great porch, and 
was so low that it scarce gave passage for a man on 
hands and knees. Grotesque sculptures appeared on 
every hand ; one being especially noticeable where a 
king wearing a crown which would have floored such 
men as live in our days, poured holy water over a 

74 



The Shadow of the God 

dead cat, — an occult ceremony which must have 
stirred the holy enthusiasm of many a pious heart, 

" Well," said "Whitman, " it's easy to believe 
Tom's story now. That lake is plainly an intermit- 
tent spring, and any one can see that the shadow from 
that pillar will lie almost directly across the door- 
way to-night. The man who tarried too long in 
there tarried till the vultures were satisfied out here ; " 
and he looked at a great bird soaring a thousand feet 
above them. 

Miss Ethel shivered, and would not sit in the 
shade of the eastern pylon ; so, as soon as they 
had looked around, and had ascertained that the 
entrance passage plunged steeply down into the hill, 
they went off to sit by the lake-side. 

It was a weird spot in that hoary sepulchre of an 
ancient faith, but Tom was irrepressible. " Great 
old building ; humph ! Eleven o'clock ; at three I am 
going to explore the whole thing inside. It 's as 
big as all creation, and will take the afternoon ; 
besides, I haven't seen any skeletons." 

'' You '11 get lost, sir ; it 's a regular labyrinth 
inside," objected Ethel. 

''There are hands cut in the rock at every cross- 
roads to show the way, and look at all these 
candles." 

" But the old priests — " 

" Dead and gone a century." 

" But some of them might — " 

"None of them do. You're nervous, miss." 

She flushed, and said something about intuition of 
women. 

" Stops up at the Rio Grande." 

75 



The Shadow of the God 

Such logic was invincible, and yet she seemed 
dissatisfied. At length she got him to promise to 
come out before the shadow reached the door ; and 
as she seemed very worried and anxious, the conces- 
sion was made — and Tom was careful to keep his 
promises. But here a diiEculty arose. Little was 
known of the temple interior, but by common report 
it was a small edition of the Mammoth Cave. How 
could one inside know when the shadow reached the 
door ? It had been taken for granted that Whitm.an 
should stay out with Miss Ethel, for she would 
never consent to enter, even if it were feasible. He 
might go in and give warning, but the chances of 
his finding Tom were ridiculously small, and Tom 
could n't keep running back to the entrance to find 
out. 

" I '11 tell you," said Tom, " work it out by 
mathematics ; that will be sport. Make Ethel do it. 
There, my dear, is a chance to show that men are 
poets, and women mathematicians." 

She started at having her words thrown up at her 
so soon, and colored deeply, but she felt that the 
reputation of her sex rested upon her. She threw 
her head back and a little to one side, defiantly, as 
women will when combative, and accepted the 
challenge. 

Out came Whitman's long lead-pencil and mathe- 
matical tables, and Tom brought forth a dilapidated 
note-book. Whitman's omnipresent tape-measure 
on the end of a stick showed the height of the pillar 
above the terrace to be fifteen feet. How long 
would it take the shadow to block a doorway forty- 
nine feet distant ? This was child's play for a 

76 



The Shadow of the God 

Vassar girl. Find the angle which the sun made 
with the summit of the pillar j divide by ninety 
degrees, and multiply the number of hours between 
noon and sunset by this proper fraction. Now the 
sun was setting at forty minutes past five to-night ; so 
there were all the data, 

" Don't forget the refraction," said Whitman, 
with a laugh. Now refraction would have altered 
the result some three minutes, but Miss Ethel was 
thrown into consternation ; for all she knew, it might 
make the difference of an hour. She bit thoughtfully 
at the pencil, and the point broke. Whitman shar- 
pened it for her. Just then she saw a table of re- 
fraction coefficients ; thank Heaven, she knew how 
to use them ! It v/as all on page twenty-seven ; she 
remembered it all by heart. The amount of mathe- 
matics a young lady can get by rote is amazing. She 
uttered a sigh of relief; she realized now how 
frightened she had been, for the figures gyrated in all 
directions, and ciphers and decimal points kept dis- 
appearing; she must be careful, or she would get 
something down wrong. Whitman should never 
know how near he had come to catching her, and 
the mathematical reputation of her sex was preserved 
in its integrity, so far as she was concerned. 

There, the problem was done; at 5.01 p.m., 
precisely, the shadow would reach the doorway. 
Tom was to allow five minutes lee-way, and come 
out at 4.56. 

As it came on toward three o'clock, they strolled 
up to the terrace. The sun did not strike the rock 
so blindingly now, and they started, as they saw on 
the lintel of the door, the bloody imprint of a human 

77 



The Shadow of the God 

hand. But it was only that strange symbol puzzle 
of the antiquarian, which peers out from tangled 
underbrush and yawning cavern throughout the land 
of the ancient Aztec. 

" I shall stay my whole time," declared Tom, as 
he went down on his hands and knees at the en- 
trance ; and they could hear him remonstrating with 
the narrow passage till his voice was lost in the 
distance. 

Two hours to while away in that graveyard of 
the centuries. It was very quiet, and even the lap- 
ping of the lake against the stones was no longer 
discernible. The silence was oppressive, and Whit- 
man proposed a ride in the woods. A pink haze 
rose from a neighboring swamp, and, as the sun sank 
lower and lower, the profound silence, as of a tomb, 
grew more and more depressing. At last, to break 
the spell. Whitman ventured to recite the first lines 
of Shelley's " Naples," — 

** I stood within the city disinterred. 
And heard the autumnal leaves like light foot-falls 
of spirits, passing through the streets.'* 

Ethel looked at him queerly, as if, perhaps, he 
were something more than a calculating machine, 
after all. 

It was her turn, now, to relieve the monotony : 
" By the way, what do you think of that for trigo- 
nometry ? " and she gayly handed him the paper con- 
taining her computations of the afternoon. He 
thought she seemed a little ill at ease, as if she began 
to doubt her work, in the awesome quiet of the 
woods. 

78 



The Shadow of the God 

He smiled, and glanced at the figures carelessly, 
then started, and began to figure rapidly. Silence, 
deep and unbroken. 

" Well, what 's the matter, sir ? " she broke in, 
impatiently. 

" Why, the refraction coefficient of vacuum to 
air is 1.00029, not 1.0294, ^^^ 7^^ bring the answer 
out twenty-six minutes too high. Taking out the 
five minutes, Tom will come out twenty-one minutes 
too late." 

They turned their horses' heads, he with knitted 
brow, she with ashen face, and the rapid hoof-beats 
were not too quick to be a threnody in their ears. 

Suddenly he reined up with a loud laugh. " Fools 
— er — excuse me, I am — what harm will it do if he 
does cross the shadow ? There we were taking it 
for granted that the priesthood still existed j it must 
have been this devilish silence." 

The color came back to her face, and she laughed 
a little. 

They rode out upon the plateau ; it was 4.40, and 
the shadow must be well across the opening. And 
then Whitman leaped half out of his saddle, and gave 
a choking cry ; while his companion drooped forward 
on the horse's neck, and the world swam round and 
round and round. 

On the summit of the temple, clad in Aztec 
garb, stood a white-haired priest, and six others, 
armed with the iztli knife, clustered around the 
doorway. 

The girl clapped her hands to her face and burst 
into tears, crying that she had killed her cousin, and 
all for pride, and that she knew nothing about mathe- 

79 



The Shadow of the God 

matlcs at all. She seemed scarcely able to sit on her 
horse. 

Whitman only stared blankly before him. So the 
old priesthood was not all gone. After all, it was 
not so strange in that great unknown peninsula. 

" Why don't you save him ? " cried Ethel ; and 
there was a fine light in her eyes, and her hands 
were clenched now. Whitman felt that any other 
girl would have fainted long ago, and a wave of 
admiration swept over him. 

" Oh, if you were only a man, and not a fossil " 
— it sounded ludicrous at such a time — "I am 
going up myself. Poor old Tom ! " 

He had the presence of mind to seize her bridle- 
rein. Parabolas, hyperbolas, — what not darted 
through his head, poor aids at such a time. After 
all, calculus was a small thing to know when human 
life hung in the balance and quick wit might tip the 
scale. He knew now that the good opinion of this 
young lady was not so undesirable. He would give 
a good deal for it at this moment. 

" And can't you save him ? " she cried in piteous 
tones. 

He was thinking clearly now, at any rate : the 
water, the priests, and the shadow ; the shadow, the 
priests, and the water ; which could be eliminated 
from that network of death ? 

He leaped with delight as a thought dawned on 
him, and he was never prouder in his life than when 
he wheeled on the shivering girl. " I can ! " he 
said, while his eyes danced with that battle-fire which 
lurks in every true man, — " but you must go home." 

She looked at him with rebellious eyes; but he 

80 



The Shadow of the God 

gazed steadily back, and it was the man now and not 
the mathematician. She turned her horse, with never 
a word, and rode ofF, looking back only once with 
wistful glance — subdued, yet perhaps subduer. 

Silence again, and the dreamy air ; fleeting shadows 
and the peace of the sleeping woods ! But it was a 
time for most vigorous action. That shadow could 
be lifted in just one way. The stone must go. The 
shadow gone, the scrupulous priests could no longer 
claim their victim. It would be a complete rescue. 
In a few minutes Tom would be out and the work 
must be fast. The pillar was larger at top than 
bottom, and the centre of gravity high. A sharp 
blow well up would overthrow it ; for the ancient 
builders used no cement. He was ofF his horse im- 
mediately and running toward the terrace. The 
priests looked on with patient, wondering eyes. They 
had naught to do with him. He sprang upon the 
parapet and thus gained four out of the fifteen feet ; 
eight feet high can a tall man strike with effect, and 
it would fall out just right here. The two-foot 
coping seemed narrower than the dread Al Sirat, but 
it was wide enough for one blow of a desperate man ; 
there could not be another. Eight feet up he struck, 
and in a glance he caught the faint markings on the 
pillar. Then stone and sky and all flashed out of 
sight ; and the water flew up and smote him, and 
seethed and bubbled over his head. He saw where 
the great foundations of the temple-wall sank into 
the bright sand ; and then the whole calm water- 
world green and waving, rose before his eyes, with 
startled fish and long-bending water-grasses. 

He gained the shore at last, with his left wrist all 
6 8i 



The Shadow of the God 

bent In a Collie's fracture, and dashed away the water 
which dripped from his hair Into his eyes. Then he 
sat down, sick to vomiting, and looked around. The 
temple was pillarless now as the great black Kaaba of 
Mecca ; but he hardly noticed that. There, strung 
along the water-terrace and looking down Into the 
silent lake, stood the seven priests of the great war- 
god ; and, as they stood, they chanted the Maya- 
death-song. Death and the Yucatan Indian are 
brethren, and the latter lives only to long for some 
excuse for entering Into that last fraternal embrace. 
These seven, standing over the total wreck of the 
crumbling faith, looking down Into the depths whither 
the light of their eyes had gone, had nothing to live 
for, and It was a joyful farewell to those long deso- 
late halls. The Maya-death-song Is the weirdest 
strain which ever touched human ear; and the 
hushed voices of legions of departed spirits breathe In 
the not Inharmonious notes. Lengthening shadows, 
and the cool of approaching evening, and never a 
cry ! The water whitened with foam, and the bub- 
bles rose, and the circles eddied to the lily-pads off In 
the woods ; but the brown hands clung In tiger-grip 
and water grasses are tenacious. 

Whitman and Tom rode home in the dark, and 
lights were twinkling all about the house as they 
came up. Some one said, as they passed through the 
door, " You 're not a fossil ; " and perhaps It was 
meant for Tom. 

There were two who walked by the brook-side at 
evening. The departure, which had been postponed 
a day, was set for to-morrow. 

82 



The Shadow of the God 

It was Whitman who spoke, and the width of the 
path was between them. He was earnest enough 
now. 

"Miss Ethel," — they always called her that, — 
" do you mean, can you mean that I may have any 
hope of — er — well, solving your problems for you 
— er — all the rest of your life ? " 

He waited a long time. 

" I suppose you think I need some one after yes- 
terday," she said faintly. 

"And may I be that one ? " 

The universe stood still to hear the answer, but 
only a final letter was audible. 

After all, the nineteenth letter of the English alpha- 
bet has its uses. 



S3 



The Cuirassier i 



THE CUIRASSIER 

WITH a hearty dash and a sabre's clash, 
With a thousand gleams and a double flash 
Of the brightened steel that knows no fear, 
What say ye, lads, as our horses rear ? 
Who is there equals a cuirassier ? 

With a bold, brave air and a winning smile, 
With a stolen kiss that 's won by guile. 
And a swagger known full many a mile. 

What say ye, lassies, as we appear ? 

Was there ever the like of a cuirassier ? 

A flagon, then, of the rich, red wine. 
And a toast for the foot, the men of the line, 
To the sapper, the lancer, the cannoneer. 
But first to the man who owns no peer. 
Come, drink ye, men, " To the cuirassier ! " 



i 
1 

84 \ 



Herb o' Grace 



HERB O' GRACE 

** You must wear your rue with a difference.'* 

Persons Principally Concerned 

Rev. Ernest Bellamy, aged 40, the Rector of St. Luke's 

in the Woods. 
Cicely, aged 20, who plays **Lady Bountiful'' under the 

Rector's direction j and 
Mike, the Rector's terrier. 

THE scene is Bellamy's study in bachelor dis- 
order. At one side is a tea-table and opposite 
a desk. At the back are windows and a glass door. 
Through these one gets a glimpse of a garden in the 
full sunshine of a late spring afternoon. At the desk 
sits Bellamy smoking a pipe and writing j near him 
lies Mike, the terrier. 

Bellamy (writing). Finally, my brethren (gazes 
out of the window). Finally, my brethren (^takes out 
his watch). Why, it 's four o'clock. Bellamy, my 
boy, let the finally go to — some other time. You 
deserve a rest. {Walks over to the doorway^ Ah, 
what a day it is ! These spring days are much too 
fine to cage oneself up in a room. No wonder a 
man can't keep his mind on his work. No wonder. 
Bah ! What 's the sense of lying to myself this 
way ? When I know that the only reason I have 
loafed away the best part of a Saturday afternoon 
with my sermon unwritten, is because I have been 



Herb o' Grace 

much more Intent on wondering If it were not almost 
time for Cicely to come. And she is coming, and 
very soon now ! Come over here, Mike, you lazy 
beast ! I am going to tell you something. (Mike 
rises^ stretches himself lazily, and comes over to Bellamy, 
who sits down in a big chair and takes him on his knees.) 
Possibly you may not have guessed the fact, so I '11 
tell you — whisper — {whispers in the dog*s ear) — 
Yes, really ! There 's no use In my trying to hide 
it or disguise or lie out of it. Now, if you could, 
my worthy friend, I suppose you 'd croak and ask 
me — very naturally — what a middle-aged, compara- 
tively sane country parson had to do with a thing of 
that sort, and I would n't have a thing to say in my 
defence, Mike, not a thing. I am ashamed of 
myself, and yet — and yet I was never so happy In 
my life before. And I '11 tell you why, and it 's a 
greater secret than the other — it 's because — the 
conceited Idiot that I am — I think she cares just a 
little bit for me! And, something more — and this 
the greatest secret of all — I'm going to ask her ! 
What do you think of that ? Why don't you show 
some signs of surprise ? Of all the unsympathetic 
confidants ! There, get down now, for I must put 
the room to rights, for Cicely 's coming. Mike ! 
Cicely 's coming ! And maybe she '11 make tea for 
us, and perhaps — But we must wait and see. {Be- 
gins to clear up the room.) Now, these can go In here 
{tucks old newspapers behind the bookcase)^ and these 
In here {brushes some scraps under the rug). 

Now, I wonder If there are any burnt matches in 
the teacups this time. {Looks.) No, not one — Why, 
there are n't any flowers. Cicely won't like that ! 

86 



Herb o' Grace 

Never mind, we can go out and get some together — 
Look at that picture over the mantel — I must 
straighten that. (Pulls chair up and stands on it^ 
straightening the picture^ 
{Enter Cicely with a basket on her arm. She laughs?^ 

Cicely (from the doorway^ I am afraid that I am 
interrupting you, Mr. Bellamy. 

Bell, (turning and seeing her^ Oh, there you are. 
Cicely, come in. I was just straightening that picture. 
I had been writing, but, er — I 'm resting now. (Gets 
down from chair^ 

Cic. I 'm glad of that. You must get so tired. 
I 've just been down with jelly for old Mrs. Tudor, 
and am on my way to Mrs. Wilkins', if you will give 
me those copies of " The Church Militant " you 
promised her. 

Bell. Certainly, I have them right here ; but you 
have not got to go this very minute, have you ? 

Cic. Oh, no ! Besides, I have a lot of things to 
say to you about poor Mrs. Tudor. 

Bell, (aside), Mrs. Tudor be bothered ! {To 
Cicely) All right, but meanwhile won't you be 
charitable to me and make me some tea ? 

Cic. That will be doing myself a kindness ; I love to 
make tea. But I thought old Margaret made it for you ! 

Bell. She does, but I would much rather have you. 

Cic. Of course I will, then. 

Bell. That will be splendid. Here, I beg your 
pardon ! let me relieve you. 

Cic. Thank you (giving him the basket). Be very 
careful not to drop that ; there 's a bowl of soup and 
some wine in it for Mrs. Grimes — I made the soup 
all myself! 

87 



Herb o* Grace 

Bell, {aside), I wish I were Mrs. Grimes ! 

Cic. {giving him a bunch of herbs). These are for 
her too — 

Bell. What odd-looking flowers ! 

Cic. They 're not flowers at all, they 're herbs. 
The poor old thing puts great faith in them, so I got 
them for her. She wanted sweet marjoram and Johns- 
wort, but I could get only rue. {She sits down at the 
tea-table and busies herself with the tea things.) 

Bell. Rue ! That 's for remembrance, is n't it ? 

Cic. Oh, you 're thinking of rosemary. Rue 
means bitterness. 

Bell. Sometimes it 's the same thing, I 'm afraid. 

Cic. It ought not to be. You know rue's other 
name is herb o' grace. This water 's fine and hot. 
Oh ! I 've put three lumps in your cup. You like 
sugar, don't you ? 

Bell. Yes, oh yes ; {aside) but I never take more 
than one lump. 

Cic. And cream ? {Pours it in,) 

Bell. N — that is, yes ! {Aside) I hate cream in 
my tea. 

Cic. There ! Now, do say you like it. 

Bell, {sipping), Delicious ! Quite the best I ever 
tasted. 

Cic. I 'm so glad. Now some for myself — Here, 
Mike, here 's a lump of sugar for you. There, sir ! — 
The last time I made tea for you you kept your tobacco 
in the tea-caddy. Do you remember ? 

Bell. Yes, it was a capital place for it. But 
there is n't any there now. 

Cic. No, everything is in very good order. Mar- 
garet takes good care of you, I think, 

88 



Herb o' Grace 

Bell, (indifferently). Oh yes, she does everything 
well enough. 

Cic. Mr. Bellamy, you are n't half grateful enough. 
For my part, I think Margaret does everything for 
your comfort. 

Bell. She tries to ; but there is so much a servant 
can't do, after all, Miss Cicely. 

Cic. How odd it sounds to have you say " Miss " 
to me ! I wish you would n't. Why, you 've called 
me Cicely ever since I was a little girl, and I should 
no more think of having you call me " Miss " than I 
should of calling you Ernest. Well, Mr. Bellamy, 
I will give some advice, may I ? The only thing for 
you to do is to find a wife. 

Bell. I 'm afraid it is easier to find her than to 
win her. 

Cic. Why do you say that ? I assure you, girls 
aren't so foolish as you seem to think. 

Bell. But they would be wise in this case. Why, 
what would they have to do with an old man like 
me ? 

Cic. But you are n't old, at least not very. I 'm 
sure you don't look as old as papa — and even if — 
you were — old — 

Bell. Well, what ? Ah, but put yourself in her 
place. Suppose I should come to you. Cicely, and 
say, " Here I am in autumn, you in mid-spring. 
Will you take what there is left of my life, worn 
and old, and give me yours, fresh and sweet and un- 
broken, in exchange — for I love you ; will you take 
my heart, that has grown tired with aching for lost 
hope, and weary with yearning for impossible ideals, 
and give me yours, tremulous with new life, because 

89 



Herb o' Grace 

I love you ? " Suppose I should ask you, Cicely, 
what would you say ? 

The chimes strike the hour. 

Cic. I think, Mr. Bellamy, I would say " yes," if 
I loved you. [She rises.) But I must go now. I 
promised Bob I would come at five, and he 's waiting 
for me. 

Bell. Bob ? What, has Bob come back ? 

Cic. Yes,he came yesterday. [She turns away shyly.) 
And oh, Mr. Bellamy, perhaps it is too soon to tell 
any one, but I feel I must tell you, you have been so 
kind to me always and are such a friend of papa's. 
Bob says he does care for me, and I — I — 

Bell. I understand. I am glad you have told me 
so soon, Cicely, for I would want to be one of the first 
to wish you happiness. And I do, my dear, with all 
my heart. 

Cic. Thank you, Mr. Bellamy ! And now, about 
that foolish girl. If you will only send her home, 
well, I think I can show her what a mistake she is 
making. 

Bell. I don't believe you will have to attempt as 
much as that. We 're better off as bachelors, Mike 
and I. I am afraid that we 've gotten selfish and 
settled and could not adapt ourselves to new ways 
easily. But you will come to make tea for us 
sometimes ? Just as you have to-day, so we sha'n't 
forget our manners ? And you '11 think of us now 
and then, won't you ? For we sha'n't forget you. 

Cic. Indeed, indeed, I will. 

Bell. Thank you. But I am keeping you, and I 
have no right to do that — now, you know ! 

Cic. Yes, I must run along. There are " The 

90 



Herb o* Grace 

Church Militants." Good-by, Mr. Bellamy. The 
tea was very nice ! 

Bell. Good-by, Cicely ! (^He puts his hand softly 
on her hair.) Good-by, and God bless and keep you 
— always ! 

Cicely goes out. 

Bellamy stands in the doorway looking after her. 
He smiles, and bows, and says good-by. The lights 
in the garden die away. The sound of an organ 
playing the Intermezzo comes as from a distance. 

Bell, (at the door). Good-by ! (^He comes in and 
sits in the big chair.) Dear little Cicely ! I wonder 
if she knows, strolling under the apple blossoms with 
her lover, that she has just killed youth and heaven 
for some one. No. She cannot know, and she 
must never know. It would break her tender little 
heart. And after all, why should she ? It was my 
fault, in mistaking friendliness, perhaps a little pity — 
for — something more. That 's what we get for 
wanting too much, Mike, my boy. Perhaps I ought 
to have taken your advice. It was foolish for me 
even to dream that she could ever care for me in that 
way ! Foolish ! it was mad ! And yet if it only 
could have been ! Dear God, I can't think of that ! 
I must not think of it ! only perhaps, now and then, 
of what was, never what might have been ! (J pause.) 
Well, Mike, you won't go back on me, will you, old 
boy ? No, you are faithful from the end of that 
Irish nose of yours to the tip of your stubby tail ! 
And we '11 just have to settle down to the old order 
of things, and must not think of afternoon tea and 
some one pretty and dainty to be waiting for us when 
we come home tired — and — things of that sort — 

91 



Herb o' Grace 

any more. They 're not for the likes of you and me. 
But we must just make up our minds to having the 
house as quiet and lonely as it used to be, and set 
ourselves to doing our duty and trying to enjoy it — • 
and — that reminds me, I might begin by writing the 
'^ finally " — that I postponed. {Js he goes to his desk^ 
he sees a sprig of rue on the floor. He picks it up.) 
Cicely must have dropped it. " There 's me for 
you " — No, not that. I like its other name better 
— Herb o' Grace ! (^He raises it to his lipSy and the 
curtain falls.) 



92 



At Saint Fortune 



AT SAINT FORTUNfi j 

AT old Saint Fortune the sea j 

Creeps up to clasp the gray old town, ; 

The dreaming skies bend tenderly i 

And round about stretch dune and down. 

j 

The wind-racked houses on the shore j 

With dim old eyes gaze 'cross the bay, ] 
For gallant ships that come no more 

Again to old Saint Fortune. ' 

,i 

With marigolds the gardens gleam, ;i 

And in the doors, when work is done, ] 

Stand girls with happy eyes a-dream, i 

And old men dozing in the sun. 

i 

Great peace broods o*er Saint Fortune, | 

Born of the sunshine and the sea,' I 

From time far ofF and long dead day ; 

That was and nevermore shall be. | 

And when the waiting west is bright j 

With all the sunset's gleam and glow, j 

And safely settled for the night, I 

The town sleeps, then the sea croons low : \ 

*' Be not downcast, O hearts ashore, \ 

When waves mount high and great winds chafe, ! 

For all thy sons who come no more, ! 
Deep in my heart are waiting safe ! " 

93 



Fable 



FABLE 

HERE and there through the wheat glowed the 
red poppy blossoms, like great passionate, 
palpitating stars in a pale green, unfeeling sky. 

The winds swept over the field, and the wheat- 
stalks bowed humbly before them. But of the pop- 
pies no such humility was required ; the winds rather 
played about them, alternately teasing and caressing 
them, and laughing softly at the pretty coquetry of 
their petulance. 

Of one blood-red bloom, deeper in color and finer 
in texture, perhaps, than its fellows, the winds never 
tired; nor indeed was it averse to their flattering 
attentions. 

Finally, a stolid burgher wheat-stalk felt it its duty 
to interpose and to expostulate with the thoughtless 
flower upon the unseemliness of its conduct. 

" Have you never considered," it began, " what 
a useless thing you are ? What right have you to 
be happy ? Do you not see all about you these 
thousands of industrious wheat-stalks, each of whom, 
like myself, is at vi^ork creating and bringing to 
maturity a fruit which is some day to be of the 
greatest value to the world ? You are an intruder 
here in this busy community. We shall be grain 
some day ; is that not a noble ambition ? And you, 
what can you hope for or aspire to ? You flaunt 
and prink yourself for a time before every coxcomb 

94 



Fable 

breeze, and then you die and are forgotten; that is 
your fate." 

The flower shrank under the bitterness of the re- 
proof. Mutely it protested against all that the wheat- 
stalk had said, but what manner of defence was it 
possible to make ? Uselessness has no argument 
against the iron logic of utility. Henceforth the 
breezes wooed in vain. 

As the July sun sank behind the horizon, a youth 
and a maiden walked together through the field, part- 
ing the wheat. The youth stooped, and picking the 
sorrowing poppy, gave it to his companion. As the 
girl's fingers pressed its stem, the flower gave one 
timid glance upward, and saw in the face above it a 
color scarcely less deep than its own. The poppy 
died on the breast of the girl, forgetting entirely in 
its rapture the wheat-stalk's bitter words. 

The wheat-stalk must needs moralize on the event, 
remarking sarcastically to a neighbor, that the poppy 
had come to a pretty end. " How far," it inquired, 
" would a thousand such go toward feeding one hungry 
child ? " 

The wheat-stalk was a faithful servant, and of a 
surety did not lack its reward. 



95 



From Helolse to Abelard 



FROM HfiLOISE TO ABELARD 

IN the dim church at Vesper-time last night, 
Amid the surge of canticle and prayer 
And ecstasies of adoration, there 
With the great cross high in the tapers* light, 
I crouched where all the nuns knelt, hushed and white. 
Those still, pure women ! Have they aught to share 
With hearts that yearn, and mad desires that dare 
To barter Heaven for earthly touch and sight? 

Across the singing came a dream to me — 

Lo, it was April and we twain a-stray 

Down drifted orchard-paths in that old place 

My heart has folded safe in memory. 

Do you remember. Dear, that sweet spring day ? 

Ah, pity, Lord ! Let me forget its grace ! 



96 



Applied Mathematics 



APPLIED MATHEMATICS 

THE court mathematician's pupil was sitting 
dejectedly on a rustic seat in the beautiful 
gardens which surrounded the royal palace of 
Nunvalia. But it would be an error to call him 
the pupil of the court mathematician, for such he was 
no longer; neither was he, as a few short hours 
before, the accepted suitor of Angelina, the court 
mathematician's lovely daughter : hence the cause of 
his woe. 

This is how it all happened. The court mathe- 
matician and his pupil had been working together 
on a mathematical problem of huge dimensions, and 
they had differed as to the result of one of their 
computations. It was a small point indeed, but 
when professional honor is involved there is no such 
thing as agreeing to disagree, as ordinary people may, 
even on a very insignificant point. 

" The square of the cube root of the logarithm of 
the sine of 45° is 1.973 1," ^^^^ ^^^ court mathema- 
tician, firmly. 

" The square of the cube root of the logarithm of 
the sine of 45° is 1.9732," replied his pupil, with 
equal decision. 

" I said one ten-thousandth," retorted the court 
mathematician, warmly. 

" Pardon me, two ten-thousandths," answered the 
pupil. 

7 97 



Applied Mathematics 

The court mathematician glared at his pupil, and 
his pupil glared back in return. 

" One," almost shouted the court mathematician ; 
" and what is more, I command you not to contra- 
dict me." 

His pupil was silent, but held up two fingers. 

I will not describe how the anger of the court 
mathematician became a passion, and the passion a 
fury, and how in the latter state he ordered his pupil 
to leave the house and never dare to come there 
again ; nor how he remained obdurate in his decision, 
in spite of all the supplications of his daughter, who 
even went so far as to throw herself on the floor 
and clasp his unrelenting knees. 

So now Ferdinand — such was the name of the 
court mathematician's pupil that was — sat discon- 
solate and sweetheartless under the trees of the royal 
gardens, bemoaning his hard fate ; naturally he fell 
into figures of speech suggested by his early training. 

" Ah ! she is the locus of all good traits," he 
murmured with a sigh. "Yes, her life is the curve 
toward which my own has been tending from the 
first. Once I believed mine to be the tangent to 
hers at finite distance ; woe is me that I should find 
that it is an asymptote." 

While Ferdinand was thus complaining, the Prin- 
cess Elsa, the third and youngest daughter of King 
Adolphus of Nunvalia, who was strolling idly through 
the royal gardens, chanced to come that way, and 
hearing the young man's voice came a bit closer and 
peered through the shrubbery that surrounded the 
rustic seat, to see from whom the doleful sounds 
were coming. 

98 



Applied Mathematics 

The required course In mathematics for princesses 
in Nunvalia at that time did not include analytics, 
and hence the Princess Elsa did not understand a 
word that the ex-pupil had uttered, but being a 
woman as well as a princess she was able to interpret 
pretty well the young man's sighs and woebegone 
countenance. Now the princess was tender-hearted, 
and a bit frolicsome too ; so she determined to address 
this good-looking young man and inquire the cause 
of his grief; which she did accordingly. 

It was an unwritten law at the court of Nunvalia 
that no man should express love for another woman 
in the presence of any of the ladies of the royal 
family ; yet for all this Ferdinand need not have 
answered the princess just as he did, and thereby 
cause her to drop her eyes to the ground ; perhaps 
he felt just a bit flattered by the sympathy of a 
princess. 

That night the Princess Elsa related to her lady 

in waiting her conversation with the silly youth in 

the garden, and both mistress and maid laughed 

heartily over the story. Then they talked together 

^ in low voices — and if I should say what they said, 

i it would spoil my story. 

-/ But if the princess thought of Ferdinand that 
evening, no vestige of remembrance of the princess 
remained in the mind of the court mathematician's 
ex-pupil ; for it was on that evening that he had 
arranged a secret meeting with his Angelina, at an 
hour when the court mathematician would be sure to 
be lost in his calculations. And at the same time that 
the playful princess and her maid were maliciously 
plotting in the royal palace, out under the trees before 

99 



Applied Mathematics 

the court mathematician's house the two lovers were 
also contriving a plot from which, to judge from the 
beatific faces that the moonlight revealed, they ex- 
pected the happiest outcome. 

" Can you love me enough for that ? " asked the 
court mathematician's ex-pupil anxiously, as the 
time drew near when they must leave each other. 

" Yes, when you have won the ruby," answered 
Angelina, prudently. 

" Ah, where is the paper ? " he asked eagerly. 

In answer the girl took from her bosom a bit of 
paper and handed it to him. They read it together 
in the moonlight. 

" And one ten-thousandth," murmured Angelina, 
laughingly. 

" Two, though," the ex-pupil answered doggedly. 

"For my sake, one," she pleaded, putting her 
arms about his neck. 

" Yes, for our sakes, one ; " and he kissed her. 

It will be necessary before going any further to 
make a digression and speak of certain affairs of state 
in the kingdom of Nunvalia. King Adolphus of 
Nunvalia, like many another king, had found it 
frequently very difficult to collect the taxes due him 
from his subjects. He had tried imprisonment and 
even beheading as punishments for non-payment, but 
for all that many of his people had continued to 
spend all their money just before the tax-collector 
came to them, and then what was to be done ? 

In this dilemma the king called to him his court 
economist and asked his advice. As a result, two 
years later there appeared an exhaustive treatise on 

100 



Applied Mathematics 

" Taxation " in fourteen volumes, written by the 
court economist, copies of which are still to be seen 
among the Nunvalian archives. The gist of the 
treatise was as follows : First, that it is very hard to 
take money out of a man's pocket when the man is 
looking — and especially when there is none there. 
" This," wrote the court economist, " is the difficulty 
in the system prevailing in Nunvalia." Second, it 
is easier to take money from a man's pocket when 
he is not looking. And third, it is easier still to do 
so when one makes a pretence of giving something 
in return. 

" What pretence would you suggest ? " asked the 
king when the court economist had explained to him 
what there was in his fourteen volumes and what it 
meant. 

" Theoretically," replied the court economist, cau- 
tiously, " it is not possible to get something in return 
for nothing; but considering that constant element 
in human nature which, for want of a better term, 
may be called the 'eternally gullible,* I think the 
result could be obtained approximately by means of a 
lottery." 

But King Adolphus objected to a lottery. '' The 
court moral and social philosopher," he said, "tells 
me that lotteries tend to cause a deterioration in 
public morality, and that is a thing I should like to 
avoid in the kingdom of Nunvalia." 

But then a brilliant idea occurred to him. " I 
have it," he cried. " I will raise my taxes by means 
of a guessing game, the moral objections to which 
will be more than balanced by the educational advan- 
tages. This year I will have my people guess how 

lOI 



Applied Mathematics 

many beans there are in a bottle" (this game was 
then very popular in Nunvalia,) " each citizen paying 
so much for the privilege of guessing, and the one 
coming the nearest to the correct number receiving 
the valuable prize which I shall offer. Every year I 
shall have a new problem devised, and thus make 
revenue raising in my kingdom a great instrument 
for popular education." 

The scheme was tried, and worked to perfection. 
The populace, who had heard what the problem was 
to be, got bottles of all shapes and sizes, and practised 
estimating their contents — measured in beans — until 
they became so accurate that when it came to the 
contest the guessing was very close indeed, and the 
very number guessed in fact, it being 11,989^, one 
bean having been split and the other half lost in the 
process of filling the jar. 

This happened several years before the events of 
our story, and so pleased was King Adolphus with 
the results of his scheme that he continued it year 
after year. This particular year it was announced 
that a mathematical problem would be given in the 
annual contest ; whereupon, to the king's great joy, 
all his people began to hunt up and study their old 
arithmetics. Furthermore the king announced that 
the prize would be nothing less than the third finest 
jewel of his crown, which, as was understood by all, 
was a very beautiful ruby of great size and value. 

The problem was to be devised by the court math- 
ematician. " It will give him something to do at 
last," said the king, delightedly. Heretofore the 
court mathematician's sole duty had been to ride in 
state processions, he being allowed at other times to 

102 



Applied Mathematics 

go triangulating among the stars at will, in the hope 
that in this way the stars might be discovered to be 
at some time of importance to the kingdom of 
Nunvalia. 

Now on the paper which Angelina had given her 
lover was written the problem whose correct solution 
meant the possession of the ruby, itself a princely 
fortune. 

The day of the contest came at last, and a vast 
multitude was assembled in the public square of the 
capital, some to try for the prize, others as mere 
onlookers. A throne had been raised at one side 
of the square for the king, who was to preside in 
person ; and around him were seats where, nearest to 
the king, sat the members of the royal family, and 
on either side of these the courtiers with their wives 
and daughters. 

The king arose and called the first name on his 
list. A young man pale with the studying of all the 
old arithmetic books he could find, stepped forward 
before the throne. Then the king read slowly the 
following : 

" What is the square of the cube root of the loga- 
rithm of the sine of 45° ? " 

The pale young man looked paler still and trembled 
visibly. He knew what a square was ; he thought 
he knew what a cube root was ; he remembered 
indistinctly having heard once of a logarithm ; but a 
sine — " Twenty-five," he cried in desperation. 

" Wrong," answered the king sternly, and called 
upon the next contestant. 

The next man knew nothing about any of these 

103 



Applied Mathematics 

terms, but thinking that the pale youth was apt to 
know a little more than he, said twenty-six. The 
next answered twenty-four, and the fourth, seeing that 
his predecessors were evidently not on the track at 
all, guessed one thousand. And thus it went for three 
long weary hours, at the end of which the king 
and the spectators were showing evident signs of 
weariness. — 

At last the king called the name of the court 
mathematician's ex-pupil. 

Just a moment before this, however, a messenger 
in the royal livery, who had been sent the previous 
day to search for a young man answering to the 
description of the court mathematician's ex-pupil, 
aiid who had forgotten all about his commission 
until a few minutes before, hastened up to the young 
man and gave him a note written on delicate, violet- 
scented paper. Ferdinand had just glanced at it 
when he heard his name called. This is what he 
had read : — 

Stupid youth, do you not understand what is meant by the 
third finest jewel in King Adolphus' crown ? What else 
but his third daughter, the most unfortunate Elsa ? If the 
words you spoke in the garden were not utterly false, you 
will be at the little postern gate on the east wing of the 
palace to-night at midnight. E. 

Ferdinand, dazzled by the contents of the note, 
stepped forward mechanically, and made the custom- 
ary obeisance before the throne. The time of the 
meeting proposed by Princess Elsa had passed, but he 
did not think of that. He only thought of the 
power he had to gain the prize that King Adolphus 

104 



Applied Mathematics 

had offered. To be the husband of a princess, son- 
in-law of a king — this lay in his power! Then 
he throught of Angelina and how she had put her 
arms about his neck, and he thanked the princess for 
her information. 

He was brought to his senses by hearing the wearied 
voice of King Adolphus, who was thoroughly tired 
of the whole proceeding and about come to the point 
of telling the next contestant to give the correct 
answer or be beheaded, droning for the hundred and 
fifty-fourth time, "What is the square of the cube 
root of the logarithm of the sine of 45° ?" 

The ex-pupil of the court mathematician looked at 
the Princess Elsa, who, all unconscious of the mischief 
she was causing, returned his glance with a well- 
affected look of reproach and supplication. 

" One and nine thousand seven hundred and 
thirty — " He paused and looked at Angelina, whose 
soft gray eyes were fixed intently upon him ; " two 
ten-thousandths," he finished doggedly. 

" Wrong ! " cried the king angrily, and called the 
next name. 

" One and nine thousand seven hundred and thirty- 
three ten-thousandths," answered the next man, 
shrewdly. 

"Wrong again," cried the king, still more petu- 
lantly. " You did n't come as near to it as he did." 

The next contestant did not know the difference 
between mathematics and geology, yet, strange to say, 
he replied without hesitation, " One and nine thou- 
sand seven hundred and thirty-one ten-thousandths." 

" Right at last ! " cried the king, gleefully. " Kneel, 
my friend, and receive your prize ; " and the man 

105 



Applied Mathematics 

knelt on the steps of the throne, while the wearied 
multitude applauded wildly. 

Now, as Ferdinand knew, the successful contestant 
was a middle-aged man with a wife and seven chil- 
dren, and he smiled, in spite of the bitterness of his 
disappointment, to think of the disposition he would 
make of his prize, — for it was a capital offence in 
Nunvalia to refuse the gift of the king. 

Imagine then his surprise and rage when he saw 
in King Adolphus' extended hand the ruby. 

For a moment he stood confounded. Then he 
pushed his way through the throng, and throwing him- 
self before the throne, cried that he had a boon to ask. 

" State it," said the king good-naturedlly, and with- 
drawing his hand. 

" Your majesty, I dispute the computation of the 
court mathematician, and maintain that the square of 
the cube root of the logarithm of the sine of 45° is 

1-9732." 

The king frowned. 

" Listen, your highness," continued Ferdinand. 
" I do not wish to regain the ruby. But I love the 
court mathematician's daughter. Grant that if I 
can prove him in error he shall give her to me in 
marriage, and if I am shown to be wrong I promise 
to pay for my boldness with my head." 

The king gladly consented to this proposal. The 
prospect of enjoying a beheading, a luxury which his 
advanced notions of the function of a king had not 
allowed him for a long time, appealed very strongly 
to his not yet entirely civilized and moralized nature. 
He therefore called forth the court mathematician, and 
the discussion began. 

106 



Applied Mathematics 

But the king soon repented of his action. For he 
could not understand a word which either disputant 
uttered ; nor could his wise men nor any of his court 
any better than he j neither indeed could the court 
mathematician understand his pupil, nor on the other 
hand could the pupil understand the court mathemati- 
cian ; and therefore the discussion went on for almost 
an hour, now purely argumentatively, and now be- 
coming heated almost to the point of personal recrim- 
ination and blows, and now again subsiding into the 
persuasive ; until at last the king, being able to stand 
it no longer, jumped to his feet and was about to 
cry, " To the block with both of them." Just then 
his youngest daughter, the Princess Elsa, laid her 
hand on his sleeve. 

Now the Princess Elsa, who was a tender-hearted 
maid in spite of her occasional pranks, had seen the 
mischief that she had unwittingly done, and had de- 
termined to make amends for it if possible. 

When King Adolphus saw her standing at his side, 
he put off uttering his dire command, and leaned 
over to hear what she had to say. Then gradually 
the stern look on his face became mollified, and bid- 
ding the princess be seated, he thus addressed the 
court mathematician and his ex-pupil, — 

" It is evident that this point cannot be settled by 
dispute, and that it will be necessary for each to give 
away a little to the other. This is the compromise 
which the Princess Elsa, my daughter, suggests, and 
which I now command to be carried out. You " 
(addressing the ex-pupil) " shall acknowledge that the 
square of the cube root of the logarithm of the sine 
of 45° is 1. 9731 j this will satisfy the court mathe- 

107 



Applied Mathematics 

matician, and being a young man you ought to know 
that you must be wrong anyway. And you " (address- 
ing the court mathematician) " shall give your daugh- 
ter to your former pupil ; and I will say that being 
an old man you should have known better than to try 
to hinder the course of true love. Thus will we 
follow our old maxim which says, ' Honor shall be 
given to old age, and to the youth his sweetheart.* 
And,'* added the enlightened king of Nunvalia, smil- 
ing, "since it is impossible to tell. just what is the 
square of the cube root of the logarithm of the sine 
of 45°, I will keep the ruby myself, and have it reset 
in my crown." 

That night, as Ferdinand was wending his way 
through the royal gardens toward the place of rendez- 
vous with his beloved, he was stopped by a man who 
gave into his hands a packet and then hastened away. 
Ferdinand opened the packet, and within found a 
beautiful little casket of gold and mother-of-pearl, and 
inside the casket a ruby, — none other than the one 
which had been the third jewel in worth in the crown 
of the king of Nunvalia. And he found in the 
casket also a little bit of pasteboard, upon which was 
written, in the same hand as was the note he had 
received in the afternoon, these words : "If you love 
a girl, look upon no other, serve no other, trust no 
other." 

The ruby the ex-pupil of the court mathematician 
afterward sold, and he and his beautiful wife lived on 
the proceeds of its sale all their life long. The cas- 
ket he gave to Angelina that very evening. But the 
card — he did not. 



1 08 



As Toll 



AS TOLL 

LOVELY Mabel, were you dreaming ? 
Glad the day you said to me, 
Dancing eyes so brightly beaming, 
" Give my love to dear Marie ! " 
What a strange exhilaration 
To be bearer of your heart. 
What a wonderful temptation 
For a part. 

For I have not tried to find her 
Since you sent your love by me ; 
Day by day I think I 'm blinder, — - 
Fruitless search, as you might see. 
I wonder, if in sending. 
If you chose your slave by chance. 
What that twinkle was portending 
In your glance ? 

Tell me, when I bear the treasure. 
Would you very angry be 
Should I keep a trifling measure 
That was hardly meant for me ? 
For it 's common in commissions 
Some percentage of the whole 
To extract from you patricians 
Just for toll. 



109 



At Monte Carlo 



AT MONTE CARLO 

1WAS seated at one of the tables of the Cafe de 
Paris, and was waiting for the time to come 
when the crowd would return. The place was de- 
serted, or at least practically so; the only persons 
present were the leader of the orchestra, who was 
leaning on the edge of the piano, with a cigarette be- 
tween his lips, and the waiter with whom he was 
discussing a political question. From time to time 
he removed the cigarette from his lips, and made 
passes in the air with it, which gave him an advantage 
over the gar^on whose arms were full of empty beer- 
glasses, and so had to depend solely on his lips ; which, 
as every one knows, was a distinct drawback. 

The old woman was putting the chairs back in 
place around the little tables, and the chef talked 
with the cashier at her little desk at the back. It 
was quiet, and the only sounds were an occasional 
whistle from an engine about to enter the short tun- 
nel at Villefranche, which seemed to have a petulant 
note about it as if the engine objected to entering the 
dark hole with its red lights, its smoke, and its noise. 
The towers of the Casino rose above the palms, and 
began to take more definite form as some one lighted 
one by one the little oil lamps with colored globes 
that followed the lines of the building. 

The first group of guests arrived. It consisted of 
a man and two women, the former a type of the 

no 



At Monte Carlo 

Frenchman of the Boulevards. He wore the straight- 
brimmed cylindrical silk hat so offensive to the Amer- 
ican eye, and the tight-fitting evening coat, and the 
embroidered shirt-front and black gloves were in 
accordance with it. The women were also typical, 
loud of voice, vivacious of manner, and with that 
peculiar something that marks at once the born and 
bred Parisienne. The white light of the arc lamp 
above them accentuated the pencilling of the brows, 
and the vermilion line of the lips. A fourth mem- 
ber of the party I forgot to mention. A white poodle 
cut to represent a lion followed in their wake. Seated 
at one of the tables over long glasses of absinthe, to 
which the arc light gave the color of beryl, they dis- 
cussed the events of the day and plans for the even- 
ing; nor was the poodle forgotten, for a lump of 
sugar or sweet cracker now and then fell to his lot. 
The man was as vivacious as the women, and all 
talked at once, and about nothing, — a trait peculiar to 
the nation to which they belonged. An Englishman 
now entered, at once making a contrast between him- 
self and the group at the table. Tall, broad of shoul- 
der, blond, and athletic, with a strongly marked face 
and quiet manner, he too was a type of the race from 
which he came, and the old proverb that " An Eng- 
lishman can whip three Frenchmen " came to my 
mind as I looked across to where the scented gesticu- 
lating son of France sat and grimaced over his ab- 
sinthe and oranges. It had grown dark, and the 
towers of the Casino were entirely outlined by the lit- 
tle colored globes, and between the trunks of the 
palm-trees I could see the entrance like the door of a 
huge furnace sending its light in a broad pathway, and 

III 



At Monte Carlo 

seeming to swallow the many people that crossed its 
threshold, for every one seemed to go in, and none to 
come out. Another group entered, — two young fel- 
lows in evening dress followed by a third marked by 
his very lack of personality. Tall and dressed in gray, 
with stooping shoulders, his scanty and sandy-colored 
hair carefully parted, he looked about him with watery 
blue eyes in a vacant way, as when a torch is sud- 
denly brought before the eyes of an owl. He was 
the sort of a man you see on ocean steamers who 
never seems to know any one, and drinks champagne 
for lunch j you might also see him at a racecourse, 
but always alone. 

They came and went, this light or heavy minded 
throng, came in and drank, and listened to the orches- 
tra, and went out again into the night, and if you 
chose to follow any of them, you would generally see 
them swallowed by the great glowing maw of the 
Casino. All sorts and conditions of men ; the coach- 
man went in beside the count whose ancestors had 
worn the red cross and died in the Holy Land, for 
the love of money makes the whole world kin. 

And so the crowd came and went in the cafe, and 
every one was happy or pretended to be, and the 
lights from the Casino seemed to grow brighter as 
the night advanced. Why this was a red-letter day 
to me I do not know, only that I have never for- 
gotten it. 



112 



The Song of the Cavaliers 



THE SONG OF THE CAVALIERS 

WHEN our sabres rattle merrily against our 
lance's butt, 
And our bugles ring out clearly in the coolness of 
the dawn, 
You can see the guidons waving as the ranks begin 
to shut. 
And the morning sun beams forth on the sabres 
that are drawn. 
Then the bits begin to jangle and our horses paw the 
air. 
When we vault into the saddle and we grasp the 
bridle-rein. 
Of danger we are fearless, and for death we do not 
care. 
For we fight for good Don Carlos and the grim 
grandees of Spain. 

So to horse and away 
At the break of day ^ 
With never a thought of fears ^ 
For Spain and the right 
We 7/ die or we Ul fight ^ 
Sing Ho ^ for the Cavalier s» 

As we gallop through the villages or through the 
sylvan glades. 
Merry maid and buxom matron smile and wave as 
we ride by ; 
8 113 



The Song of the Cavaliers 

There are broken hearts behind us, as well as broken 
blades, 
For the cavaliers are gallants till the war notes 
rend the sky. 
But when summer breezes waver and grow cold with 
news of war, 
We gird our good swords closer and we arm us for 
the fight, 
Maid and winecup fade behind us, lance and helmet 
to the fore. 
And we wheel into our battle line for Carlos and 
the right. 

So to horse and away ^ 
At break of day ^ 
With never a thought of fears <^ 
We 'II die or we HI fight 
For Spain and the right^ 
Sing Ho^for the Cavaliers* 

When at last the brazen bugles ripple out the ring- 
ing charge. 
We rise up in our stirrups and we wave our swords 
on high. 
The dust clouds rise beneath us, and the demons 
seem at large. 
The cavaliers are charging in to conquer or to 
die. 
Grim death may claim his victims from out our 
whirling ranks. 
Our plumes may be down-trodden in the grinning, 
bloody sod. 
The Cavaliers will meet their fate without a word of 
thanks, 

114 



. The Song of the Cavaliers 

But they've died for good Don Carlos, for old 
Spain, and for their God. 

So to horse and away ^ 
At break of day ^ 
With never a thought offears^ 
We 7/ die or we Ul fight 
For Spain and the right^ 
Sing Ho ^ for the Cavaliers* 



"5 



<( 



Which Passeth All Understanding *' 



"WHICH PASSETH ALL UNDERSTANDING'* 

IT was reflected in every face. Men's eyes looked 
kinder and happier, and the singing of thousands 
and thousands of hearts filled the air with a full- 
voiced, happy murmur, which rose and fell vaiyingly 
over the great city. Down town the shops sent out 
a cheerful glow early in the gray of the afternoon, 
and the crowds surging restlessly back and forth 
under the brilliantly lighted windows swelled the 
murmur till it rose to an indistinct buzz. On the 
up-town avenues it was quieter, but the long 
lines of well-groomed men and beautifully gowned 
women had changed their usual self-complacent 
saunter to a brisker pace, and were hurrying about 
the many little errands which must be done before 
Christmas. 

The tapering rows of arc lights were beginning to 
shine brightly over against the growing dusk of 
the park as Wilton swung rapidly along, his blood 
tingling in response to the keen cold of the wind. 
Wilton was six feet and good-natured, and did most 
things with an unconcern which was marvellous. He 
fell in love with Miss Wainwright quite as uncon- 
cernedly as he did anything, and was on his way to 
see her now. Much more wonderful, he was think- 
ing deeply. It has been omitted to say that at times 
Wilton rose to occasions. He turned sharply into 
the broad side street, and went up the steps of the 

ii6 



c< 



Which Passeth All Understanding " 



big brownstone two at a time, nodded brightly to the 
maid, — who was of all maids the daintiest and 
sweetest, ^ — and towered behind her to Miss Wain- 
wright's study. This was a privilege which he 
shared alone. He stood aimlessly in the centre of 
the room for a moment, with the first flush of awe 
that a man sometimes feels in surroundings exclu- 
sively feminine. 

" I forgive your lateness," said a voice from the 
window. " Look ! " She pointed over to the west, 
where the palisades rose straight and black against 
the dull red of the setting sun. Below, the street 
was filled with stylish traps, returning home after 
their hour in the park. The subdued rumble of 
many wheels, and the jingle of tossing lip-chains came 
to them faintly. " But it 's so bleak," said Miss 
Wainwright. '' I 've been lonely to-day," she went 
on, " and some way I Ve been thinking of those still, 
warm nights last summer, — you remember ? — when 
there were only little baby swells on the water, and 
the moon's reflection reminded us of big silver dollars 
coming up from the bottom," 

" Sentimental twilight," agreed Wilton. " I can 
picture just how bleak and cold and windy it is out 
there now," he continued. " The buoys are leaning 
way over with the wind, and the schooners are 
shouldering their way stubbornly against the heavy roll- 
ers, and the little white yachts at anchor in the harbor 
are turning their noses up into the wind and dipping 
their bright lights defiantly out to sea, and the sea is 
rolling in, strong and restless, and churning itself 
white over against Little Captain's reef, and — I am 
glad to be here," he ended with a smile. 

117 



" Which Passeth All Understanding '* 

She nodded silently to the cigarette in his hand. 
"See," she said, "these are my Christmas presents. 
Don't you think this will please Jack ? " and she 
held up a tobacco pouch, which, as such, was mani- 
festly impossible. " I copied this for papa," she con- 
tinued. " Is n't it appropriate ? " Mr. Pipp was 
being convinced that a European trip was necessary. 
" And I have something very nice for a big, careless 
boy I know ; something to remind him — " 

But Wilton was staring out the window unheed- 
ingly. He was smoking rapidly, blowing the smoke 
nervously far in front of him, as men will when they 
think. A keen woman remarks this shortly. 

Miss Wainwright sat down and folded her hands. 
" Tell me," she said simply. 

" But it 's so positively foolish, and you would n't 
take it seriously, and — " 

" I have yet to dress for the Assembly," remarked 
Miss Wainwright, pointedly. 

Wilton wheeled sharply around. " You have 
noticed," he said, " that there is an intoxication about 
a dance." 

" Music and men," she answered, " comes after you 
remove your gloves." 

" Music and women," he corrected, " comes after 
your second collar. It is furthered," he went on, 
" by the ride home in the half shadow. Close prox- 
imity to a being whose individuality is lost in the soft, 
warm, perfumed fluffiness of an immense opera cloak 
is not conducive to sobriety." 

Miss Wainwright was laughing at him frankly. 
" Yes ? " she smiled. 

" Well, to drop the general and hold to the con- 

ii8 



« 



Which Passeth All Understanding '* 



ditlons. He and she used to be excellent friends, 
and she had been away for a year. It was perhaps 
natural that he should stop at her home after the 
dance. It was natural that he should toast her return 
in what, for obvious reasons, he called the queen's 
drink. 

" She held the glass before the light, and smiled to 
herself, and spoke of it as ' my influential friend.' 
And later, of all places, she stopped him in the inky 
blackness of the library to ask when he was to call. 
Now, if not indisputable, at least it is a fact which 
can be proved, that in a dark room, between two people 
who are — who are — well, let us say — merely the 
dance and the home-toast, you understand — politely 
intoxicated, there is a mutual attraction. And so" 
— Wilton paused to relight his cigarette — '' it was 
the intoxication of the surroundings — that, pure and 
simple. In nine cases out of ten, the matter, foolish 
as it was, would in the end merely have strengthened 
a friendship like theirs. But in this case the girl 
happened to take it seriously, and he happened to 
have a peculiar motto on his coat of arms, Kfyp Trysty 
or something like that, which means keep faith. He 
also had ideas about family honor which were 
peculiar, and was of course in love with another girl 
at the time." Wilton stopped abruptly, and un- 
clasping his watch-fob, handed it to her silently. 
Stamped in old Scottish beneath the crest were 
the words Kfyp Tryst. She fingered it thought- 
fully. Wilton leaned toward her over the back of 
a chair. 

" Alice," he said, " we drove tandem the other 
morning in the park, and since then I 've been think- 

119 



€i 



Which Passeth All Understanding" 



ing just how much it would mean to me — just how 
good it would be — if we might start sometime early 
in the new year and do the rest of life tandem. It 's 
all come over me with a sort of rush, and even now 
it 's hard for me to realize myself just how much I 
love you, and now," he went on slowly, " there 's 
that ; " and he pointed to the crest in her hand. 
" Not so long ago I relished just such affairs. At 
worst I called them ridiculous. This one seems — 
wretched. It 's mine, all my doing," he went on, 
" but I know that it 's your nature to be kind and for- 
giving, and so I 'm allowing myself to hope." He 
straightened himself. " Do you think, Alice — " 

She rose abruptly. "There is a time for think- 
ing, and a time for dressing," she said. " You realjy 
must go. You require considerable forgiveness," 
she went on ; " but — " The smile in her eyes was 
hardly defiant, and always Wilton did things uncon- 
cernedly. The pretty little maid lifted her hands 
and gasped, at a sound which she had grown to 
associate exclusively with herself. But a new bank- 
note crinkled in the pretty maid's bosom, and xVIiss 
Wainwright sang softly to herself, while the pretty 
maid dressed her. " Even to the changing of a 
motto," she said. And later, as she went downstairs 
she was still holding an odd-looking crest that was 
lettered in Scotch, and saying something to herself 
about a big, foolish, splendid boy. And the footman 
held the door open absent-mindedly so long, while 
she was pulling on her gloves, that the long white 
cloak blew off one shoulder, and a cold, tiny snow- 
flake drifted in and settled on the warm neck, and 
was quickly covered up and smothered for its im- 

I20 



« 



Which Passeth All Understanding " 



pertinence. But at Christmas thousands of hearts 
are singing, and all mankind is happy, and even a 
footman may be pardoned if his mind be filled with 
thoughts of the Yule-tide and bright wood-fires and 
savory roast turkey. 



121 



At the Dawn 



AT THE DAWN 

PALING stars and a waking breeze ; 
Then softly, faintly heard, 
Across the dewy silences, 
Drowsy and sweet — a bird. 

While the Dawn's banners deck the sky 
And dark trees sigh and stir, 

I pray God's dearest gift may lie 
In this new day for Her. 



12? 



The Leper 



THE LEPER 

« 'r\OMINE^ Domine^ Domine ! " I was wont to 
£ J say, over and over, till my tongue was 
numb and my lips near to bleeding, but God never 
heard. " Domine^ Domine^ Save the white people ! 
Save us^ save us ! " Is Heaven so far, then, that 
God cannot see that my flesh is white and rotten 
and stinking ? Can he not know that my blood is 
turned to milk ? I have shaken the wooden clapper 
of my bell, and made a great noise that He might 
take notice of me. But God — the God of the 
Red People, we say — did not hear. It was in the 
old days when I had a left foot which was white, 
indeed, but nearly whole, that I prayed thus to the 
God of the Red Folk. In that time I fell into 
frenzies and tore the scabs from my legs with my 
nails, till I was covered with blood — but the blood 
was more horrible than the flesh. 

I knew a leper then who was a priest aforetime 
— but he became white like us, and joined our lodge, 
the Order of the White Brethren. When he was 
new to us, he carved the crucifix on his bell, and a 
crown, which I do not rightly remember ; but after- 
ward he scrawled over them, and cut images which 
were not decent. When he was new, he wrote a 
litany for us, all in monks' Latin, full of " Domine^ 
Domine^ Domine ! " that one could say in rhythm with 
the strokes of the bell on his neck. " Lord God^ save 

123 



The Leper 

us ! Save us from death forever who are now dead in 
Vife ! Save us^ Lord^ save us ! " Afterward he spat 
out at the church, because it would not help him ; 
and he wrote the litany anew, full of blasphemy and 
uncleanness. I learned that, too, in my own course, 
though I had never quite known the other, and we 
would repeat it together, when he was not laughing 
to himself or praying to the fiends in hell. 

He was a gaunt man, this Aucassin, with gray 
hair that was thicker where the tonsure had been. 
And he died — I do not remember — a hound bit 
his throat and he died. That was in the south of 
the land, where we followed a great train of men in 
shirts of mail, with many banners, and long lines of 
men with steel knives that dazzled our eyes in the 
sun. And in the train was much refuse, so that 
some of us followed for weeks, not heeding our 
companions the dogs, who had fear of us. There 
were other followers, too, who, although afraid, would 
yet pelt us from behind shelter. But it happened 
that Aucassin followed one into a marsh, and there- 
after we were free of these beggars. 

Once, too, there came men from the rear camp, clad 
in yellow jerkins, who were drunk, and who would 
have cut us with their swords. But we did not run, 
and Aucassin laughed at them, so that they were 
astonished ; and, finally, when they saw what manner 
of men we were, they fled and left their weapons 
behind them. So that our white robes seemed a 
greater defence than coats of mail — like the angels 
in the holy writings, Aucassin told me. But I could 
not see wherein we were like the holy angels — the 
angels. 

124 



The Leper 

There are two parts in the time of our life ; I do 
not know which is the worse, yet they are unlike. 
When we are not long lepers, or young, so that the 
sound of our bells is yet hateful in our ears and the 
color of our bodies sickens us, we cry out and maim 
ourselves vainly, and we wish to crush whatever we 
look upon, just as a snake whose back is broken bites 
at twigs. Some of the white brothers kill themselves, 
but these are not many. In these days we are full 
of the desires of the Red People, so that we are nearly 
akin to them. I have heard that those others, when 
life goes ill with them, seek adventure. So do we, 
I think ; but I am not sure, for it is so long and the 
desire of adventure does not live long, because what- 
ever may be to do, there is no one to see. After, 
we are quieter, but we are less alike. Some, like 
Aucassin, go about with their lips mouthing words, 
without ceasing, whether prayers to Satan, or words 
learned and forgotten, whose meaning is yet forgotten. 
And some draw their cowls over their heads and do 
not speak, even as I have not spoken since the last 
harvest. It is one in the end, when the eyes go, and 
the feet and hands. 

I can remember when I hated the Red People so 
that I waited behind trees on the highway that I 
might frighten them — women and little children. 
The men I feared more than they feared me. And 
then they . . . there is another happening which I 
remember also, of a monk. 

He rode a jennet that was weighted down with 
heavy saddle panniers, and under the three knots of 
his girdle was the neck of a bottle. When I came 
into the road and laid my hand on the bridle of his 

125 



The Leper 

beast, he fell and lay in the dust trembling. And 
when I left the beast and approached him, out of 
malice, he made great use of what strength fear had 
left in him, and clambered into the saddle and rode 
away, throwing away his goods that he might be 
carried the faster. Part of the burden was of coin, 
and I threw gold ducats at him, striking him in the 
head and cutting him so that the blood ran down his 
bald scalp. But his blood was red, and that threw 
me into a frenzy, and I followed after him ; but I 
could not overtake him. I do not know why I 
remember these things. 

While I was still young, so that my thoughts were 
as the thoughts of those others, I hid in a forest that 
was beyond the town of La Tourin. In the day I 
lay in the leaves in the wood, but at night I ventured 
to the edge of the town that I might see the yellov/ 
lights in the windows, and haply children at a fire, 
and, when I grew bold, sometimes men at a tavern 
table. In those days I had not forgotten the others 
and the ways of their life. By the edge of the forest, 
so near that I could lie in the wood and see the 
smoke of the chimney and the sun on the tiles, stood 
a cottage, and because of its nearness I learned to 
watch it by day. When it was evening, I could see 
through an opening, where sat an old man, yellow 
and thin, near to dying, and often with him sat his 
daughter. I had learned to be more quiet than the 
leaves wherein I lay, and though I came and hid in a 
young tree near the door, they never heard me. 

The girl had yellow hair and a face red as the 
berries which grow in the forests in the winter for the 
White Brethren. And because of the ruddiness of 

126 



The Leper 

her skin, and her body, firm and clean like a young 
tree, a great desire rose in my flesh, and not only in 
my flesh, but my heart, if the kind God had left me 
that. 

Therefore I made myself strong in the purpose to 
go there no more, the virtues of the others not being 
yet dead in me. But because the appetites of the 
Red People were no less living in my flesh, I could 
not. Wherefore I washed my body in the brook, 
and dried it with leaves whenever I went down to 
the town. And as I came more often, so much 
greater grew the desire in my flesh — the flesh which 
I began to understand in all its foulness — and I grew 
daily fiercer and more like the wild beasts. Once I 
saw a young man sitting at the fire, fair and ruddy 
also, and strong of limb ; whereat I grew so angry 
that I went back to the wood and thought how I 
should kill him — and worse. That came to nothing, 
because I never saw him again. 

In those days when I began to feel the evil that lay 
in me, I called unto all the saints whose names I 
knew. Could they not see that I was not like the 
others? Even all the squirrels in the wood knew 
that, and were afraid. Therefore why should I feel 
the same desires as the others, and the same pain ? 
But Aucassin said that Heaven was very far ofF, and 
there they cannot hear us, save we be in a church. 
And how was I, of the white people, to enter a 
church ? After that, upon a day when the air was 
sweet like spring-water, as I lay in the leaves in the 
forest, I saw the girl walking through the trees alone. 
I grasped the trunk of a sapling and lay shaking as 
with an ague, so that the leaves rustled, until she passed 

127 



The Leper 

on, not seeing me. And again after that, she came 
often to the wood, so that I learned where to wait for 
her. And day by day it was harder to keep silence. 
It grew in my mind then that if I showed myself, 
she would not see that I was different — if I should 
throw away my bell and pull back my cowl. I do 
not know why these strange thoughts were in my 
brain, — haply because I had eaten no fit food for 
many days. Thus one day when she stopped in the 
wood, I came out from behind a tree and stood be- 
fore her. I had forgotten that even vermin would 
not come near me. 

She did not speak to me when I waited there for 
her, but cried out, and fell back as if she were dead. 
And a great eagerness filled me, and I ran forward. 
But before I reached her I stopped, with the same 
impulses that the others feel fighting in me, so that I 
went no nearer, but stopped, too far away to touch 
the hem of her dress, and stood thus biting my lips 
till the teeth met. But in the end I turned my back 
upon her, as she lay there with the red color gone 
from her face, and ran through the forest crying, 
" Leper^ leper ! " and shaking my bell until my feet 
gave way under me, and I sank down, I do not know 
where. 

I do not know why I remember this. Yesterday 
I did not know that I had not always been of the 
white people, and to-morrow I should not recognize 
the woman if I should see her. But to-day I know. 

Since then I have shunned the white people as the 
others shun me, and live alone in the forest, talking to 
myself of I do not know what. I do not know. But 
my limbs are almost gone now, and I cannot tell 

328 



The Leper 

what will happen then. I only know that the fire of i 

hell will burn my flesh till it is charred and almost ! 

clean like the others. That is what Aucassin said. ; 

Therefore I am waiting until then, — for the fire i 

of hell. I 



129 



A Song for Seafarers 



A SONG FOR SEAFARERS J 

i 

HOW may he know the haven's peace i 

Who never fared a-sea ? i 

Little recks he who bides on shore \ 

What tides and winds may be, — \ 

How the blue days drop down the sky, i 

And nights creep stealthily. j 

Little recks he the joy that comes J 

When 'gainst the sunset sky \ 

Dark headlands and the gray old town ^j 

In waiting welcome lie, ^ 

While harbor-lights a greeting flash j 

And homing sea-birds cry. j 

These be for him who far hath fared ; j 

For him alone they be. ! 

(Oh ! welcome waiting lights ! and oh ! fi 

Her dear eyes' watch for me ! ) ^ 

Well may I know the haven's peace, I 

For I have fared the sea. ] 



130 



Principle 



PRINCIPLE 

" 1'T is a most convenient institution, that 'cafe- 

J^ terion,' " said the broker, " not only because it 's 
in the basement, ten steps from the elevator. Have 
you never had a lunch there before? Then you 
see the simplicity of the system. And, except an 
occasional well-dressed tramp, I 've never heard of 
anything 's not being paid for — 

" Indeed it is. If one is to ruin one 's digestion 
with a mixture of coffee and lamb-pie, eaten in three 
minutes and digested in ten, it's at least a comfort 
not to spend ten minutes more waiting for checks. 
About paying ? I thought you saw. Why, you 
pick up a menu at the door, and check each dish as 
you get it. "When you come out, there's no one to 
watch you — just a cashier at a desk, and you present 
the card with whatever — " 

" Twelve, going up ! " intoned the elevator boy, 
with that graphic rising inflection which masters of 
elevating use. 

" With whatever — Well, by Gad ! Yes, you 
know what I said of the well-dressed tramp. Right 
past, and the check in my hand ! They can't count 
on absent-mindedness; still, one rarely gets too far to 
save one 's self-respect. I wonder if the boy 's in the 
office. Tim ! Tim ! let the ticker go, and take this 
check, and this, and pay the restaurant downstairs. 
And shut the door. Sharp now ! 

131 



Principle 

" Yes, they are here, as I left them. The deed *s 
in a separate package. Here. What ? Yes, that 
was the trouble; it was utterly impossible to alter it, 
my man said. So I had Clifton make a new one. 
Unpleasant, decidedly, but quite safe, I 'm sure, and 
necessary — necessary. You 'd best destroy that 
original." 



132 



To a Dreamer 



TO A DREAMER 

THINK not by dreaming to regain 
Hopes blasted by dull years of pain. 
Up, laggard, let thy sword flash outj 
Scatter the shadows by thy shout. 



133 



A Letter and a Postscript 



A LETTER AND A POSTSCRIPT 



"]%yTURCHISON." 



A man elbowed his way through the 
crowd that surrounded a fat little Englishman who 
was conducting an impromptu distribution of the 
bi-monthly mail, and took his letter. 

He was the only one in all this motley crew 
of South African miners who seemed worthy a 
second glance. Something about his mouth when he 
smiled seemed to hint that he had been cheated of 
his youth and had begun life midway. A man 
seemingly capable of the tenderest devotion and the 
bitterest hate, and one in whom silence, strength, 
and loneliness were personified. 

As he looked at the delicately penned address, his 
eyes recalled to one a half-forgotten memory of a 
morning when, from the dark shadows of the foot- 
hills, one saw the sun touch the stern mountain- 
peaks with its soft first light. 

Murchison left the noisy, good-natured crowd and 
went to another part of the store to read his letter. 
It began : — 

Dearest Husband, — It is such a long time since I 
have heard from you, lost in your terrible Africa. ... I 
have been so lonely, so very lonely, since our little Mabel 
left us, — Mabel, whom you never saw. What would I 
not give if you might have known her. . . . And you are 
coming home, let me see, why, so soon my poor little letter 

134 



A Letter and a Postscript 

may not reach you before you start. And you are rich, 
John ? Really it is all so odd. It seems as though I can 
hardly wait for the days when we shall be together again. 
You have been away for such a long time. ... I am 
much better, I think. I walked several blocks this after- 
noon, and the fresh air seemed to make me stronger. 
Cousin Annie is kinder to me each day, if that is possible. 
Perhaps I shall want to add something in the morning, so I 
shall not seal my letter now. Good-night, my dear hus- 
band, and good-by for a little while. Meg. 

And below this, in another hand : — 

Meg died early this morning. She was conscious almost 
to the last, and in no pain. I have only time to write these 
words as the postman waits. God help you. Annie. 

The man's face became livid. He clutched blindly 
at the air, and would have fallen but for the wall at 
his back. Presently he staggered out of the store, 
down the little street and out among the hills. He 
wandered on for hours, stumbling over half-buried 
rocks and tripping on the long, tough bunches of 
grass that lay in his path. He knew nothing of this ; 
only knew that the woman for whom he had tolled 
and struggled and prayed, was dead, and that he 
would never see her face again, never take her slight 
form into his arms, as he would a child's, never gaze 
into the depths of her dear eyes, nor stroke her soft 
hair again. 

H^e was sick and faint and weak, his eyes were 
blinded, his feet like lead ; yet he did not stop, but 
struggled on. At last he could go no farther. He 
fell exhausted, but lay quiet for only a moment. He 

135 



A Letter and a Postscript 

must up and away; away from this terrible night- 
mare — anywhere, but he must go. He struggled to 
his feet, staggered on for a few steps, and fell again. 
This time he did not try to rise, but lay panting, as 
some wild beast, dog-driven until it is unable to go 
farther, falls and lies in mute agony awaiting its 
end. 

As Murchison lay there, his senses became more 
and more confused, and presently he fell into a sort 
of half sleep, but he could not forget himself entirely, 
and so, though not asleep, he feared to waken. The 
cool evening wind bathed his fevered face, and at last 
its chilly breath roused him from his stupor. He sat 
up and looked about, wondering. For the moment 
he had forgotten, but now the revelation of the day's 
events came back to him with crushing force. 

A demon seemed to possess him, and liquid fire to 
run in his veins. He cursed heaven, his Maker, 
himself, the mother who bore him. Cursed, not with 
the blind, unreasoning rage of a less intense nature 
but in low-spoken sentences, every word of which 
was fully measured before it was uttered. Then 
presently the idea of self-destruction took hold on 
him. There was nothing to live for now, and he 
would die. Surely this was the simplest way out of 
his misery. Yes, he would die. 

Now he felt more calm. He was on the border- 
land between this life and the next, and he would 
pause for a few moments. How sweet and still 
everything about him seemed ! He wondered if 
there were ever before as beautiful a night. The 
soft, caressing breeze, the dark sky with its innumer- 
able dots of light, and the great, solemn mountain 

13^ 



A Letter and a Postscript 

over yonder. This last seemed like a friend to him. 
The half-light from the rising moon showed its deep 
scars, marks of conflicts long since ended. How 
grand it seemed standing there alone, utterly alone, 
yet so much nobler than the smooth, grassy hills 
among which he lay ! How much purer was the 
light that fell on its lofty peak, shedding upon its 
snowy summit a soft halo, than that which reached 
the plain below. 

And was he, a man endowed with an intellect, to 
be put to shame by a mere mass of earth and rock ? 
And she was surely watching over him now, — what 
would she say to this cowardice ? He must not, he 
could not die so. There was surely something for 
which to live. By God's help men should see in 
him the lesson he had found in the mountain, and 
perhaps some might learn as he had. 

All this took hours. 

As the east was turning pink, weary and faint he 
reached the little mining village again, and that same 
day, upon the wagon which had borne his letter to 
him, he went out into the world. 



137 



My Lady Goes to the Play 



MY LADY GOES TO THE PLAY 

WITH the link-boys running on before 
To light her on her way, 
A-lounging in her sedan goes 
Belinda to the play. 

In patch and powder, puiF and frill, 

From satin shoe to hair, 
Of all the maids in London town 

I wot there 's none so fair ! 

From Mayfair down along the Strand 

To Covent Garden's light, 
Where Master David Garrick acts 

In a new role to-night. 

The swinging sedan takes its way. 

And with expectant air 
Belinda fans, arid wonders who 

To-night there will be there. 

Sir Charles, perhaps, or, happy thought, 

Flushing thro' her powder. 
He might come in — beneath her stays 

She feels her heart beat louder. 

138 



My Lady Goes to the Play ; 

. ' 

The place, at last ! The flunkies set | 

Their dainty burden down. ] 

" Lud, what a crowd ! " My Lady frowns i 

And gathers up her gown. j 

ENVOY ] 

Alack for human loveliness { 

And for its little span ! i 

Where 's Belinda ? Here, quite fresh, \ 

Are still her gown and fan ! ; 



139 



At a Music Hall 



AT A MUSIC HALL 



"X^OU Ve never been here before, have you?" 



asked Conway, as they stepped from the 
elevator of the Gayety Roof Garden. 

" No," answered Wendall ; " and it 's queer, too, 
for I 've visited New York quite a number of times. 
What a crowd there is ! " 

" I 'm afraid we 're too late to get a seat," said 
Conway. " No, we 're in luck, there 's an empty 
table. Let 's hurry up and take it." 

" What kind of a place is this ? " asked Wendall, 
as they seated themselves. 

" Why, it 's rather a fashionable sort of theatre," 
replied his companion, " a little above the average 
music hall, I should say. That is, the vaudeville is 
no worse than you '11 find at most places during the 
summer, and the beer is excellent, which reminds 
me — Waiter ! " he called to a white-aproned 
individual who was hurrying past, " two steins and 
a couple of cigars." 

" Yes, sir," answered the man deferentially, and 
vanished in the .direction of the bar. 

"We've missed most of the numbers, I guess," 
continued Conway, " but this next ought to be good." 

Wendall glanced at the stage, where two little boys 
in lavender court suits were putting into the bulletin 
boards large cardboard placards with the name 
" Mamie Devereaux" printed conspicuously on them. 

" Who is Mamie Devereaux ? " he inquired. 

140 



At a Music Hall 

" Why, I *ve never seen her myself," said Conway, 
"but they say she is the drawing card here. She 
sings and dances, I believe, or some such stunt. 
However, you can see for yourself in a minute." 

A murmur of satisfaction swept through the audi- 
ence, which changed into noisy clappings as Miss 
Devereaux danced on the stage and kissed her hands 
knowingly to the front row. Evidently she was a 
favorite with the patrons of " The Gayety." She 
was rather a tall girl, of the usual variety star 
type, and would have been pretty if her cheeks 
had been less aggressively red. After she had fin- 
ished her salutations to the house, she nodded to the 
orchestra, danced a few preparatory steps, and began 
to sing. 

People said afterwards that Mamie was a little worse 
than usual that night. There is no use describing 
the song ; it was somewhat beyond the average man's 
powers of description even if he wanted to try, and 
the worst of it all was that she really had a beautiful 
voice. Her frank indecency affected even the dulled 
sensibilities of the audience. Most of the women 
blushed or looked down, and their escorts listened 
with a shamefaced sort of attention which did not pre- 
vent them from joining in the enthusiastic applause, 
as Mamie, after five startling verses, kissed her hands 
again and danced lightly behind the wings. 

" 1 thought you told me this was a respectable 
theatre," remarked Wendall, after a short silence. 

" I beg your pardon," answered Conway, with the 
ready cynicism of twenty-two, " I said it was fashion- 
able. Now, for heaven's sake. Bob, don't begin to 
discuss the degeneracy of the stage, because it *s too 

141 



At a Music Hall 

hot, and, besides, Mamie 's coming back again. No, 
by Jove, she is n't ! It 's some one else." 

A good many in the audience thought the same 
thing ; but it was Mamie, though at first it did n't 
seem possible. She had slipped a long, soft-colored 
cloak over the tawdriness of her former costume, and 
somehow it softened the lines of her face until she 
was almost beautiful. But it was n't only the dress ; 
the whole woman was changed ; her manner, her 
expressions, her gestures, everything. She stood 
somewhat back on the stage, out of the glare of the 
footlights, and then the orchestra began a little simple 
lullaby, and she sang it. 

There were those in the house that night who 
confessed afterwards that they cried, and no one who 
had been there laughed at them. It may have been 
only acting, but if so it was certainly the best acting 
in the world. 

She did n't sing the song exactly ; she was the song. 
Her voice touched the commonplace words and made 
them beautiful. She sang as a young mother sings 
to her first-born, and the men who listened were 
surprised out of their worldliness and thought of their 
own mothers purely and tenderly, as even the worst 
of us think of our mothers, thank God ! The tune 
lost itself in a flood of golden sound, that faltered and 
softened with yearning love, and then rang out again 
with all the passionate tenderness of maternity — and 
all its purity. 

There was no applause when the first verse ended ; 
only a little sound, as though the people were impa- 
tient at the pause. Then the violins crooned through 
the interlude and she began to sing again. 

142 



At a Music Hall 

Oh, the pathos of that second verse ! It was no 
longer the mother song, though the words were still 
those of the lullaby. The words were forgotten in 
the music ; people did n't hear them. Only they 
heard the starved soul of the woman pleading for 
that which she had not — which now she could never 
have. And in a vague, clumsy sort of way, they 
understood, and pleaded with her. 

Then back to the first verse. And again she held 
the child in her arms and sang to it, quietly, tenderly, 
and oh, how sweetly ! cuddling it close to her with 
little ripples of soft, happy laughter. And while the 
audience held their breath and leaned forward as if 
they feared to lose one note of that perfect song, her 
voice died gently into silence, and she slipped from 
the stage so quickly that, before they had time to 
recover themselves and applaud, she was gone, and 
the little boys in lavender court suits were slipping 
another name into the bulletin boards. 

" Two steins, sir ! " cried the waiter. 

Both men were rather glad of the interruption; 
your Anglo-Saxon hates to be caught off his guard 
emotionally. They lit their cigars, and then Wen- 
dail turned to his companion. 

"Just as a matter of curiosity, Fred," said he, 
" v/hich do you think was the real woman ? " 

" Neither, of course," answered Conway, " but 
she 's a mighty good actress." 

Wendall shook his head. 

" You may be right," he said doubtfully, " prob- 
ably you are ; but I think on the whole I should 
say both." 

143 



Dead Folks' Hour 



DEAD FOLKS' HOUR 

HOARY the grass in the churchyard still ; 
A round, red moon peers over the hill. 
A cricket cries like a soul in fear, 
No other sound of live thing near. 
The white frost shines ; the dead wind sighs ; 
The cold stars gleam in the silent skies ; 
A hand-like cloud blinds the moon's eye red; 
Out from their graves peer the sheeted dead ! 
Then up from their narrow cells they pass 
To keep the hour of the Hallow mass. 
Strange is the company huddled there, 
The old, the young, the foul, and the fair. 
Warm and sweet seems the frost wind's breath 
To the icy dampness underneath. 
They smooth their shrouds, and talk and jest, 
For silence reigns in the earth's wide breast. 
All too soon do the minutes pass 
Of the Dead Folks' hour of Hallow mass. 
One o'clock ! Their time is done ! 
Back to his grave creeps every one. 
But one begged God in vain to stay — 
A mother, buried but yesterday. 

The night wind sighs through the churchyard still, 
And the red moon sinks behind the hill. 



144 



Not without Precedent 



NOT WITHOUT PRECEDENT 

THE Christmas tree stood despoiled of its gaudy 
adornment of tinsel and bonbons, with only 
here and there a few as yet unextinguished tapers 
that sputtered aimless protests against the fate that 
was soon to overtake them. 

The younger members of the cousinhood, after 
bidding affectionate farewell to their hobby horses, 
their newly obtained families of dolls, and the other 
fascinating acquisitions of the evening, had been led 
off reluctantly to bed, there to be the prey of con- 
flicting forces — drowsiness, with its seductive invita- 
tion on the one hand, versus the glittering allurements 
of the real world on the other. 

There were only two persons in the room now — 
a tall young fellow of twenty and a girl of about the 
same age. They were sitting, looking into the fire 
— where else can one look when there is a fire ? — 
which had softened its boisterously cheerful mood of 
a few minutes before to one of reverie; the memory 
of former Christmas eves, sweet, though fraught, per- 
haps, with melancholy, having succeeded its whole- 
souled participation in present festivities. 

The boy was speaking. " I read a story to-day," 
he said musingly, " and I 'm going to tell it to you. 
It was about a man who, when he was strolling 
through a field once upon a time, saw a very beauti- 
ful flower, the most beautiful he had ever seen, the 
^o 145 



Not without Precedent 

only one of the kind, so he firmly believed, in the 
world. ' If I could only have this flower, I would 
be perfectly happy,' he said to himself; which might 
have seemed strange to some, since he had never 
cared much for flowers before. So great was his 
desire to get the flower for his very own that he 
determined to transplant it to the little plot of ground 
before his own house. But then he reflected that, 
having had no garden up to that time the plant 
would probably die before he could prepare the 
ground for its reception. Therefore he returned to 
his cottage, worked hard for a time, and then came 
to dig up his wonderful plant. But this time so 
struck was he with its marvellous beauty that he cried 
out, ' What a shame it is to put such a miracle of 
Nature in so mean a little garden plot as mine is ! 
It would die of very shame, even if the hardships of 
wind and weather, to which it must be exposed, did 
not cause some day its death. Rather, I will abandon 
my mean cottage and have a beautiful mansion 
erected with a conservatory, which will at once pro- 
tect and afford a suitable dwelling-place for my price- 
less flower.* All of which he did ; but when he 
returned again to the field where the flower had 
bloomed, it was no longer there." 

" What a foolish man ! " said the girl, lightly. 

The young man looked in her face earnestly. 
" Do you think so ? " he asked. 

" Yes, if he could have the flower for the taking," 
she answered. " Don't you ? " 

"You are laughing at me," said the young man, 
half offended. 

The girl looked at him gravely, but with just a 

146 



Not without Precedent 

faint suggestion of smiling In her eyes. "Why at 
you, Fred ? I was only laughing at the silly hero of 
your story." 

The young man looked rather disconcerted, and 
fingered the poker nervously for a moment. Then 
he commenced doggedly, " You may be only joking 
with me, but I am going to take you at your word." 
He drew a bit nearer, and began speaking in a lower 
voice, but hurriedly and earnestly. The girl's cheek 
became flushed, perhaps because she had bent over a 
little nearer to the fire. 



147 



In the Hills 



IN THE HILLS 

IN pomp of scarlet and a-gleam with gold, 
The Hills, like kings besieged, await the bands 
Of Winter's host grown great with power, and bold, 
Whose path was ruin 'cross the Summer lands. 

The tyrant's will the Northwind's sword fulfils ; 

The henchman. Frost, in pity will not spare. 
In trampled scarlet stand the conquered hills, 

Shorn of their glory, of their beauty bare. 

Yet they are monarchs still, and when the Night 
Has drawn the splendid curtains of the west, 

She brings them purple, with the sunset light 
Gold on their brows, their kingship's manifest. 



m3 



The Other Man's Wife 



THE OTHER MAN'S WIFE 

MRS. BENTON and Mrs. Wheeler no longer 
spoke to each other. Their husbands, 
bound together by mutual affliction, were staying at 
the club, waiting resignedly for the clouds of domes- 
tic trouble to blow over. It had all come about 
through the cursed similarity between the two halves 
of a double house. 

Benton and Wheeler had been friends for years, 
and each choosing a wife at the same time, they had 
decided to keep up the intimacy by renting the ad- 
joining halves of a double house. The arrangement 
worked beautifully. Their wives developed a great 
fondness, even to the point of matching samples for 
each other at bargain sales ; and many were the excit- 
ing rubbers of whist fought out during long winter 
evenings. The only trace of their prenuptial freedom 
which remained was the monthly club smokes, where 
they found old friends and much pleasure of a kind 
different from that of their own firesides. Punctually 
at one, they would always drive home together, 
simultaneously unlatch their doors, with a '' Jolly 
evening, was n't it, old man ? " and decorously mount 
to their conjugal partners. 

On a certain night, however, the unruffled staid- 
ness of the gathering at the club was violently dis- 
turbed. Dicky Asquith, the most popular and well- 
loved man of the brotherhood, returned to New York 

149 



The Other Man's Wife 

after a year's absence on his yacht in the Mediterra- 
nean. In his honor had the fatted calf been killed. 
A'lany an old bottle had been ruthlessly torn from its 
dusty retreat on cool shelves to contribute its little to 
the conviviality of the occasion. 

When, at one o'clock, the two benedicts rose 
unsteadily and reluctantly to take their sorrowful 
departure, the whole room cried out vehementlv, 
with many shouts of " Shysters," " Wife's apron- 
strings." Asquith himself, climbing down from the 
piano on which he had been perched as toastmaster, 
v/ith tears in his eyes begged them not to leave him 
so soon, when he had just got back. They hesi- 
tated, and were lost. 

At three the meeting broke up. Sleepy waiters 
assisted the helpless into cabs. In many cases the 
blind led the blind. Long-suffering cabbies tucked 
away obstreperous arms and legs, picked up wander- 
ing hats, and asked patiently where to go. Save for 
the rattle of the dispersing cabs, the city was silent. 

The bumping over the cobbles, as they turned into 
a cross street, awakened Benton and Wheeler to the 
fact that they were almost home. Painfully they 
extracted themselves from the common knot into 
w^hich they had slipped. Bracing themselves for the 
ordeal about to come, they endeavored to straighten 
rumpled ties and hats. From the second story of 
each house a light burned dimly. The cabman, 
being paid, drove off, leaving them to their fate. 

No railing separated the doors, and with arms 
locked for mutual support they mounted the steps. 
After much searching, the two latchkeys were pro- 
duced. Then Benton dropped his, and both men 

ISO 



The Other Man's Wife 

searched on their knees, with many matches, to 
recover it. This made no little noise ; neither was 
the quest for the keyholes inaudible. At last both 
doors stood open. The men turned, fervently wished 
each other " God-speed," and entered each the other's 
house. 

Strange was the similarity of scenes within. At 
the foot of each staircase sat a man with fumbling 
fingers unlacing his shoes. At the top stood a stiff 
figure draped in white, upon whose face was an 
expression of stern and freezing contempt. With- 
out perceiving their awaiting fates, each man, grasp- 
ing firmly the banister, commenced the weary climb. 

"John," said Mrs. Wheeler, when the toiling 
figure had nearly reached her, " you are intoxicated." 

Too much surprised to speak, Benton looked up 
at her with open mouth. Then only did Mrs. 
Wheeler see her mistake. Clasping her draperies 
close around her, with a horrified shriek she fled into 
the echoing darkness. Simultaneously from the next 
house came a similar sound. Half falling, Benton 
clattered downstairs, and collided violently with 
Wheeler, outside the door. For a moment each 
man leaned against the wall, recovering. 

" John," said Benton, gravely, " your wife 's wait- 
in' for you." 

" So 's yours, James." 

Then silence. " John, s'pose we could get into 
the club as late as this ? " 

" Less try, James." 

With arms locked for mutual support, the two 
descended the step into enveloping blackness. 



151 



Captives 



CAPTIVES 

MY brain is like a prison cage, 
Its thronging thoughts like birds. 
Captives are they, who may not find 
The outer air — in words. 

They were not born for narrow place — 
God's own free singing things ! 
And 'gainst the bars of Silence, they 
Beat ever with fierce wings. 

Some day — who knows ? — at last will end 
Their bondage — kept so long. 
And from the opened cage they '11 gain 
Their liberty of Song. 



152 



The Other Life 



THE OTHER LIFE 

PRECISELY how it happened the Elder Tramp 
could not imagine. He had never heard of 
such a thing before. There lay the Kid, stretched 
out on the snow, motionless — the Kid, whom he 
had toted all the way from Chicago. He had showed 
him how to lie most easily on the truck journals and 
to hold on to the brake-rod above his head where the 
steam-pipe keeps it warm in winter; had slept with 
him in freight cars, and served thirty days with him 
on a charge of vagrancy. 

The Elder Tramp ran his hand through his griz- 
zled hair and looked up at the starry sky. Then he 
listened to the noise of the river on the other side of 
the embankment. 

" Clean gone," he muttered in a dazed way. 
" His arm clean gone. He M 'a' bled to death, if I 
had n't tied up the stump with a twisted rag. But 
he's hurted inside, too — must be — don't see why 
he was n't all hashed up. He must 'a' dozed — he 's 
only a kid — an' to be on the road two weeks steady. 
But 'e said he must get home. Yes, he must ha' 
dozed — with the wheels o' thirty cars waitin' to 
chew 'im up, dozed and got 'is arm caught in the 
wheel. 'E must 'a' laid between the rails. There 's 
where I found 'im. 'E 's goin' pretty fast." 

The Elder Tramp went ofF to a little distance, 
and came back with his hands full of snow. With 
it he began to rub the pale face. 

153 



The Other Life 

'' This ain't so full o* cinders," he said softly. 

Presently there was a rumbling sound in the 
distance. The Tramp jumped up, shouting : '' A 
passenger train. There 's a chance then." He 
rushed to a pile of new ties near by, and began to 
strip off the fringes of bark. The train was swiftly 
approaching. Now he had an armful and deposited 
it in the middle of the track. He struck a match. 
The train was a quarter of a mile away, and the 
gleam of its headlight already on the rails. He 
shielded the flame and applied it. A feeble fire 
sprang up. It grew. Now the wind would not 
extinguish it. Still he shielded it. The train was 
fifty yards away. Still he squatted there, gazing 
curiously at the eye of the advancing engine. Now 
he held up his arm with an imperious repellent ges- 
ture. But the pilot of the engine dashed it aside. 

The wheels of eight brilliantly lighted cars drew 
their thunder from the ground and flashed by in a 
whirlwind. 

The engine had thrown up from the stack a par- 
ticularly large and brilliant spark. It descended in 
a graceful, illuminated curve and fell by the form of 
the Kid. Hissing and sputtering, it melted a little 
hollow into the snow, and seemed to glow with greater 
intensity before it became black. 

At that instant the Kid's heart beat with a fierce 
spasm. Then it fluttered — stopped. The snow of 
the world had chilled out the last fire in its core. 



154 



The Autumn Call 



THE AUTUMN CALL 

*< O heart, my heart, the world is weary-wise. 
My only resting-place is your deep eyes.** 



THERE 's a sobbing in the valley. 
There 's a moaning on the peak. 
And the myriad winds still dally, 
Summoning the heart they seek. 

Still the myriad winds are calling 
Out from all the quarters round, 

And the russet leaves are falling 
Broken-hearted, to the ground. 

II 

Then open the places of heaven's last bounding, 

And let the wild rivers run down to the sea ; 
Stretch open your ears to the trumpet peal sounding. 

Give heed to the ever eternal " to be." 
The hill gates are open, the bronzed leaves are falling. 

The season is nearing that bids us away ; 
Farewell to thee, home-haunts, the mad world is 
calling, 

And stern is the mandate and brooks no delay. 

Still feckless are we to the call that goes ringing 
From river to ocean, from valley to crown 5 

155 



The Autumn Call 

The music of billow, the bird-throated singing, 

The world-hazes cover and world-hummings drown. 

All down through the mazes of Nature's adorning 
The keen winds are shrilling their pitiless cry. 

And we must be off on the wings of the morning, 
So hail to thee, wild winds, and home-haunts, 
good-by. 

Oh ! taste of the meadow ! Oh ! scent of high places. 

That tempers the nerving salt sting of the sea ! 
The mad world will pilfer the tan from our faces, — 

The mad world that harps its eternal " to be." 
Farewell to the salt seas that ring the fair harbor. 

Farewell to the brook that hangs white on the hill 5 
Farewell to the slope climbing green to the arbor, 

Farewell to the love that no farewell can kill. 

The hills are behind us, the seas are behind us. 

The dismantled schooner lies hull down to lee ; 
And soon we will be where the past cannot find us, 

A long way from hill and from sorrowing sea. 
Then let the campfires die down to dull grayness, 

Abandon the embers by forest and trail. 
And cry with a sob and a pretence of gayness, 

" All hail to thee, mad world, and once more, all 
haU 1 " 

III 

Then hark to the wind songs, 

The myriad wind songs. 
Give heed to their call, and throw open the gate ; 

Farewell to thee, river. 

And haste thee, a-quiver. 
Far down to the sea, for the hour grows late. 

156 



The Autumn Call 

The wind songs are humming, 

Their voices are summing 
The clans of the Faithful from mountain to plain ; 

Then heed ye the wind songs, 

The myriad wind songs, 
And haste ye away to the mad world again. 



157 



White Roses 



WHITE ROSES 

THE music came to them faintly, out there 
under the trees. The warm darkness seemed 
to have grown sensuously tender with it. From 
where they were sitting they could see the yellow 
lights of the house blaze out into the night, and 
sometimes over the wail of the violins came the 
crowded sound of the chatter of many voices. The 
little girl in the white gown had taken off her long 
gloves, and had laid them limply across her knees. 
She bent forward, smoothing the wrinkles out of 
them with a kind of nervous indifference. The light 
of a fairy lamp hung in the leaves above her, fell on 
her soft hair, and caressed the smooth, babyish round- 
ness of her throat and breast. Lorrimer, leaning 
back in the shadow, regarded her with a sort of pity- 
ing admiration — " Poor little thing ! " he thought. 
As he watched her, he felt himself suddenly feeling 
very old. He envied the little girl in an amused, 
careless way. " Would you mind if I lit a cigar- 
ette ? " he inquired. He did n't care about smoking, 
but he felt the conversational blank must be filled 
somehow. 

The girl turned to him quickly. " Why are you 
so formal ? Have I ever cared ? Have I ever 
stopped you doing anything you wanted ? " 

Lorrimer smiled indulgently. It was his theory 
that a man should always indulge women as long as 

158 



White Roses 

it did not give him too much trouble. There was a 
moment's silence. The sob of the waltz-music thrilled 
the night, and made it pulsate with answering rap- 
ture. " Youth ! Youth ! " the violins seemed to be 
sighing. " So soon lost ! So soon lost ! Love and 
youth ! Love and youth ! " The music caught at 
the girl's heart convulsively. She crushed the soft 
gloves between her hands. " It is always this way," 
she said with hurried vehemence. " I do all the car- 
ing, and you — " 

" Is this apropos of cigarettes or of noth- 
ing ? " Lorrimer asked lazily. He wanted to avert 
the melodrama if possible. The girl did not hear 
him. 

"Look," she went on. "You are older than I. 
You know the world and people. Perhaps I am not 
like all the others. Maybe I amuse you. Perhaps 
you have never realized it, but you have made me 
love you. Do you understand, love you ? I know I 
have n't any decency or I would n't tell this to you. 
I don't care for decency or anything else. I love 
you ! " Her voice shrilled softly with the defiance 
of desperation. 

Lorrimer threw his half-smoked cigarette away. 
He was enough of a man to be more sorry than 
flattered by what he had heard. He would have 
given much to have known the right thing to say ; 
a feeling of shame came over him, and a wordless 
tenderness. The other had covered her face, and 
was crying softly and brokenly. Lorrimer drew 
away one of the little cold hands, still wet with her 
tears. 

" Don't cry," he said with gentle firmness. " You 

159 



White Roses 

really must n't, you know. How are we to go back 
and face all those people if you do ? There ! Now 
we can talk it all over quietly, and perhaps we can 
understand each other better. You say you love me. 
Can you tell me why, — at first, I mean ? " 

She had straightened up, and had stopped crying, 
although her lips were still working tremulously. 
There were white roses pinned to her gown and tak- 
ing one, she began to tear it to pieces, petal by petal. 
After a little pause she answered him. 

" It was your dancing at first, and then — then 
other things. And then I knew that you were my 
ideal." Lorrimer could have laughed there in the 
shadow, but the pathos of the little fluttering hands 
deterred him. 

"And I am that now, and you want to marry 
me ? " He asked the question quite simply. 

The girl looked up and met his eyes bravely. 
" Yes," she said. " You are the best and finest 
and — " 

" Wait ! " Lorrimer said. " Wait ! You don't 
know me yet." He had decided that she should 
know. " I suppose that if I were to tell you that 
V m none of these good things, you would n't believe 
me. 

The girl shook her head, smiling faintly. " No," 
she said. " I won't — " 

" Of course not. We never believe anything evil 
about our ideals, until we have ceased to have them. 
Nevertheless, it 's not true — I 'm very far from being 
even respectably virtuous, and certainly I 'm not fine 
in any way. There is really no reason why you 
should make anything more of me than of the 

i6o 



White Roses 

twenty-odd other men who ask you to dance, and 
send you flowers occasionally." 

"Ah! But I know you too well to believe you 
now. You are n't like any of those others — not 
like any one else in the whole world. How can you 
be ? I don't love any of them, and I do love you." 
Her eyes were shining like stars, and leaning forward, 
she rested her hand on his knee. Lorrimer saw that 
another method of procedure was necessary. 

" My dear," he said, " will you allow me to talk 
to you just as your father might — I 'm almost old 
enough to be — or at least your older brother ? " 

" Yes," assented the girl quietly. " Go on." 

" Do you know you don't really love this — er — 
person we have been talking about ? He is n't your 
' ideal ' at all. He merely happened to step into your 
life when you were in need of a figure to wear the 
costume your imagination had made, and masquerade 
as your ideal. Very soon you would have seen for 
yourself how badly the costume fitted — and then you 
would have blamed him for being an impostor. It 's 
not me you 're loving, dear, but your idea of me, and if 
I let you go on thinking as you do, it would merely 
hurt us both." 

" Why do you talk to me in this way ? " she broke 
out passionately. 

" Because you are a sweet, simple little girl, and I 
care for you too much to let you think you love me, 
and that your heart is broken because I can't feel for 
you in the same way." 

" If it is not love — what is it, then ? " she asked, 
almost harshly. 

"Just a part of your youth, little one," he an- 
" i6i 



White Roses 

swered gravely. " Just a part of the moonlight, and 
roses, and white frocks, and waltz-music. A very 
sweet and beautiful part, and something you '11 re- 
member some day very tenderly — but no more love 
than those lights in there where they 're dancing are 
the sun. Can you believe me ? " His tone had be- 
come very earnest. 

" Yes," she answered listlessly, " I believe you — 
anything, always." 

They sat silent again until she had pulled the last 
petal from the rose in her hand j then she asked, very 
quietly and slowly : " Do you think I '11 ever know 
this other — love — now ? " 

Lorrimer raised her hand to his lips, and kissed it, 
" I can ask no greater happiness for my dear friend 
than that, some time, she may," he said. 

Some one came through the trees behind them just 
then. " Oh, here you are ! " said the new-comer. 
*' They 're just going to begin the cotillion, and I 've 
been looking for you everywhere." 

The girl stood up, sweeping the white rose petals 
from her lap as she did so. " I 'm all ready," she said. 
" I 'm sorry you had such a bother to find me. Mr. 
Lorrimer has just been teaching me a new game. 
Good-by, Mr. Lorrimer," she said to him, " thank 
you so much for the lesson. I 'm afraid I was very 
stupid at first, but — I — I — understand perfectly 
now ; " and she laughed. 

When they had gone, Lorrimer settled back in his 
old seat again. " I 'm glad she laughed," he said, 
half aloud. " When a woman laughs, because she is 
afraid she will cry if she does n't, she has learned 
how to take care of herself." His eye fell on the 

162 



White Roses 

flowerless rose-stem on the seat beside him. He 
took it into his hand for a moment. 

" Poor little rose," he said softly. " I am sorry 
it had to be pulled to pieces ; it was so pretty — too 
pretty to last," he added under his breath. 



163 



Pagan to Priest 



PAGAN TO PRIEST 

AYE ; very fair the place you tell — 
The Holy Hosts, the changeless light, 
The rush of song, the sweep of wings — 
All glorified, all pure, all white. 



But I — I wonder if perchance, '\ 

Sometimes, when all is done, is said, \ 
My heart would long for sight again 

Of one hot pulsing bit of red. ^ 



If more than all the lights and psalms 
That will be time that has no end, 
I 'd crave the clasp of one warm hand, 
The sound of one voice saying " Friend.' 

I am not wise in holy things, 
I only know that youth is fleet — 
I ask no far stars, white and cold. 
While skies are warm and love is sweet. 



164 



Friendship above Par 



FRIENDSHIP ABOVE PAR 

MARGARET and Randall when they were 
nine and ten, respectively, had enough 
originality and imagination to supply several grown 
up persons, and yet leave an amount over that would 
make them more than ordinary children. It was 
Randall who had the originality, and Margaret the 
imagination. As a proof of his originality, he in- 
vented a system by which every one was given a 
definite numerical valuation, but which like stocks 
was liable to rise and fall. He started by assigning 
to every new acquaintance five hundred, then for all 
sins of omission and commission he subtracted cer- 
tain definite sums, and for every little act of kindness 
or generosity he added. Every virtue and every vice 
had its minus or plus value. What he did when 
any one got to absolute zero, he never told ; very 
probably he dropped their acquaintance. 

Margery, when he met her, went through this same 
valuation. They were visiting neighbors, and after 
an introduction made and strengthened over a picture- 
book, they saw each other frequently. In the first 
week Margery's stock valuation had gone up to six hun- 
dred and twenty-five, and during the next week, be- 
cause she could throw a ball almost as well as Randall, 
she went up sixty-four more points. All this without a 
fall. This was unparalleled in Randall's experience. 
Never had any one's value risen without receiving 

I6S 



Friendship above Par 

occasional set-backs, for so far he had met no one 
perfect. So it was already a case of love at first sight, 
and love, you know, has broken down more complicated 
systems than this. And it was love on both sides too. 
For, after all, originality and imagination are very 
much of the same, and Margaret found that with his 
gift of originality he could invent more stories about 
the pictures in the book than she could with her im- 
agination. So immediately she fell captive, and took 
no pains to hide the fact. Before the book was finished 
she even allowed him to wipe his fingers on her hand- 
kerchief. " You have forgotten yours," she said. 

" Boys never have them," he explained. 

She thought the matter over for several minutes, 
and then she said, " You can always borrow mine." 
This was so delicately put that with the obtuseness 
of his sex he quite overlooked its meaning. It was 
Margaret's complete and unconditional surrender. 

It would be a long story to follow their companion- 
ship through the days that followed. Margaret de- 
serted the others with whom she had played before, 
and learned to storm block forts with colored marbles, 
that were at one moment cavalry and the next can- 
non balls ; to make siege guns out of the elderberry 
bush, and to lay out a cemetery for the soldiers, 
using dominoes for headstones. The game of im- 
prisoned princess followed this, and brought about 
their only quarrel, as to whether the prince ought to 
die or not, after rescuing the princess from the fury 
of ten dragons. Randall thought that he ought to 
live ; Margaret thought he ought to die of his wounds. 
They finally compromised by having him die every 
fourth time they played. 

i66 



Friendship above Par 

All this time they had both worked the evaluation 
system, but separately, for Randall had explained it 
fully to Margaret. At the end of each week Ran- 
dall would make public Margaret's value, and Mar- 
garet, Randall's. You can readily see the result. 
Imagine yourself in love with some one, and every 
week calmly calculating how much she has risen or 
fallen in your estimation. In such a case Cupid has 
a way of adding by multiplication. By the middle of 
the summer they were both up in the thousands, and 
even in the quarrel over the princess game they only 
dropped ten points apiece. 

" Of course she 'd want him to die for her," said 
Randall, by way of excusing her. 

" It 's only right that he should live after doing so 
much," said Margaret. 

Finally, when the numbers became so large that 
they were difficult to handle, they agreed to stop. 

" You see when we get married we can commence 
again," Randall said. " For after that there will be 
as much going down as going up." When they 
stopped Margaret's score was three thousand five 
hundred and eighty-one, and Randall's three thousand 
five hundred and eighty. The difference was insisted 
upon by Randall out of politeness. 

At last the day for departure came. Margaret gave 
him her finest handkerchief with her monogram 
worked in pale blue silk, her photograph, and a 
promise to write every day. Randall gave to Mar- 
garet — nobody but themselves knows what. And 
her mother still wonders why Margaret turned her 
left cheek always for the good-night kiss. 

• •••••• 

167 



Friendship above Par 

Fifteen years later, a man who had gone through 
school and college, surveyed railroads and built 
bridges in the West, and whose name was Randall 
Easton, was crossing the continent on the Overland 
Limited with Miss Margaret Sutton. They had 
known each other for nearly a year, so Easton sup- 
posed ; but Miss Sutton, adding two and two together, 
concluded otherwise. It was the morning of the 
last day, and they were eating breakfast together in 
the dining-car. At noon they were due in San 
Francisco, and a week later Easton was to sail for 
Japan. Over his second cup of coffee he asked a 
question, one so commonplace that it is asked every 
hour somewhere in the world. It was a peculiar 
place to ask such a question, the dining car of an 
Overland Limited, but perhaps the conventionality of 
the question excused the commonplace surroundings. 

At any rate, it was answered in a most unconven- 
tional way. Miss Sutton glanced across at Easton 
and said slowly, "Aren't you afraid my valuation 
will fall too rapidly from three thousand five hundred 
and eighty-one ? " 



i68 



In the Dark 



IN THE DARK 

HAVE you ever been a-walkin' on the grim old 
hills at night, 
When the stars go twinkle-twinkle, and the moon is 

not in sight, 
And the big trees in the forest seem to keep out all 
the light ? 

You hear a noise behind you and you start, you 

don't know why. 
And somethin' in the darkness seems to moan and 

pass you by, 
And the blackness, gettin' blacker, shuts you off 

from all the sky. 

Our ancestors were foolish to believe in sprite or 

fay. 
Or in ghosts that love the darkest night and always 

shun the day. 
And that spirits of the dead still walk in their 

mysterious way. 

Yet, though it 's kind o' childish, I sometimes feel as 

though 
They were n't so wrong as we believe, and maybe 

here below 
There 's more around us in the dark than any of us 

know. 

169 



A Reverie 



A REVERIE 

THE gas was turned low, and the soft reddish 
glow of a dying wood fire filled the richly 
furnished room, giving an added lustre to the costly 
wine-set of Hungarian ware on the table and tingeing 
with a warm light the marble statuette half hiding in 
a corner. In strange contrast to this luxuriance was 
the occupant of the room, a little deformed figure, 
hardly more than half the height of an ordinary man, 
sunk deep in a great thickly upholstered armchair, 
which seemed to be holding him in its embrace and 
protecting him from the scorn — real though unex- 
pressed — that the world feels for the weaker ones of 
its great family. 

He had been reading a review, cutting the leaves 
with a beautiful little pearl-hilted dagger — some 
souvenir of foreign travel, no doubt — but the oil in 
the piano lamp beside him, which had served to light 
his page, had become exhausted and the magazine had 
fallen from his hand and lay sprawling on the hearth- 
rug by his chair. Yet he still sat before the fire, 
toying with the dainty little weapon and watching 
the firelight as it gleamed on the eager] quivering 
blade. Presently he took up from the table beside 
him a bit of crumpled paper and smoothed it out 
with his thin white hands. It was the programme 
of an amateur theatrical entertainment, and he had 
taken it up and smoothed it out in the same way 

170 



A Reverie 

several times before since his return that evening; 
each time the same look of pain had overspread his 
features. Yet in spite of all he could do, his 
mind persisted in reverting to it, with the memory 
it called up. 

As he read over the paper, his eyes turned instinc- 
tively to the photograph of a girl on the table, which 
she had given him in pity, he thought, — pity, the 
rose with the bitterest thorns of all. How perfect 
she had looked that evening ! Yes, perfect, that was 
the word j perfect in herself physically, first of all, 
and then perfect in accord with the life setting 
wherein fate had placed her. He went over in his 
musing the different scenes of the little play in which 
she had appeared — and of another scene to which 
he had been by chance an unseen audience of one. 
After the entertainment was over he had stepped 
behind the improvised scenery to wait for a friend 
who was divesting himself of his make-up, and as he 
did so he saw her standing with a tall young man 
amid the confusion of the dim-lit stage. 

The man had been congratulating her on her 
success. " I 'm afraid you did n't have the best of 
support," he said. " I confess I was terribly afraid." 

" You were a little too conscious," the girl an- 
swered with candor, " especially in the love scenes. 
But you '11 improve in time," she added lightly. 

Then the young man had leaned toward her, saying 
something in a low voice, and the watcher in the 
wing had become aware that he was eavesdropping 
and turned away. 

He could not say that a hope had been destroyed 
for him, for he had never had the remotest hope in 

171 



A Reverie 

that respect 5 yet, for all that, it was a bitter experi- 
ence. He slowly crumpled the paper in his hand 
and tossed it into the fire, and then sat watching it 
flame up, redden, and finally lose its identity among 
the glowing embers — and all the while he held the 
little dagger in one hand, now and then pressing its 
needle-like point into the other till he almost cried 
out with pain. What a strange turn his thought 
was taking ! At last he rose wearily and laid the 
weapon on the table. " In another century and 
another land I might have done it," he thought, — 
" when most likely I should have been dressed in 
motley and served as the plaything of royalty, — but 
now one can do nothing but become cynical and rail 
against all the first-born of Egypt." 



J7« 



A Song of Sport 



A SONG OF SPORT 

WHAT ho, my boys, for the leafless woods. 
On a crisp November day. 
When the west wind sings through the moss-hung 
oaks 
A merry roundelay. 
The partridge whirrs and the quail lie close ; 

Our dogs work fast and free. 
Sing ho, my boys, for the cracking guns 
And a day of jollity ! 

What ho, my boys, for a baying pack 

And a coat of crimson hue. 
With champing studs and fair, hard pulls 

With Reynard full in view. 
The clear horn rings on the cool sweet air, 

The fences fly below. 
The brush shall swing at our belt to-night. 

Sing ho, for the chase, sing ho ! 

What ho, my boys, for a narrow trail 

That leads to a placid lake, 
Where lilies float in quietude 

And hares play in the brake. 
The hounds give voice on the mountain side, 

The woods re-echo again. 
And we grasp the rifle with firm, strong hands. 

Sing ho, for a stag of ten ! 

^73 



A Song of Sport 

What ho, for sport, whatever it be, 

Wherever our pleasure calls, 
Be it gun, or horse, or field, or hounds, 

Or rod 'neath the mist-hung falls. 
Come, fill us a brimming bumper now, 

And drain it deep and low. 
A toast to sport, a toast to luck, 

Sing ho, sing ho, sing ho ! 



174 



Duets 



DUETS 

THE Sage had grown weary of solving problems 
in celestial mechanics. Their utter simpli- 
city annoyed him, and so, rising from his seat, he 
walked out into the cool, sweet garden. There, 
alone, gazing at the countless stars above, he tried to 
solve another problem, — Eternity. 

And afterward four of the King's guard bore him 
away to the madhouse. 

Two met on a highway. " Go no farther," said 
one. 

" Know you not who I am ? " said the other. " I 
go where I list ; I am Love." 

" You can go no farther," said the first. " I am 
Death." 

Two lovers quarrelled and parted, each claiming 
the other was in the wrong. The woman married a 
man she did not love ; the other drank himself to 
death. So each was avenged. 

" I WILL grant you two desires," said Life to the 
youth. " What would you ? " 

" I am blind," said the youth. " Open my eyes." 
And Life did so. 

" Now what is the other wish ? " asked Life. 

" Make me blind again," answered the youth. 

175 



Duets 

" I HAVE found the secret of the universe," said 
one. 

" And I, too," said the other. 

" But you are only a lover," said the first. 

" And you are only a scientist," answered the 
second. 

Life once cast away, as useless, a block of white 
marble ; but Sorrow, finding the block, began to labor 
upon it. 

"Your work will be vain," said Life, contempt- 
ously. 

" Wait and see," Sorrow replied. 

And after many years Life saw that Sorrow from 
the useless marble had carved out the figure of a 
strong man. 



176 



An Epitaph 



AN EPITAPH \ 

CLOSE-FOLDED to the mountain's heart i 

Let him sleep well, sleep long. i 

The voices of a thousand pines \ 

Be for his slumber song. j 

i 

9 

O'er him shall ferny greennesses , ^ 

A dauntless verdure set ' 

To comfort him till warm rains wake 

■I 

April's first violet. ; 

Here to the tired child of change, 

Through days that shall not fail, 
Shall come the summer's last Farewell, I 

The steadfast spring's All hail ! j 

'< 
And he shall fear no evil thing \ 

When warrior winds awake ; | 

I think their mighty hosts will pass | 

More gently for his sake. ' 

I 

if 

So, girt by list'ning forests, 

And hushed by breathless song, 1 

Still dreaming down the pilgrim years, 

He shall sleep well and long. \ 

His was the wand'rer's wild heart \ 

That loved not bonds and bars — 

Wildness to wildness ! Rest ! while burn \ 

The watch-lights of the stars. j 

12 177 ! 



Founded on Fact 



FOUNDED ON FACT 

THE Woman of the World sat at the piano. 
The Boy stood beside her, bending down 
to her. The Woman of the World was playing 
Schumann. Her throat and arms gleamed like warm 
marble in the soft candlelight, and the effect against 
the shadow was very lovely. Possibly the Woman 
of the World knew this. At any rate, she ought n't 
to have allowed the Boy to stand there. Being a 
woman, she continued to allow him ; but from a 
similar reason she compromised with her conscience 
and changed abruptly from the Schumann to a passion- 
less jingling two-step. The sacrifice was heroic. 

" Why do you play that thing ? " asked the 
Boy. 

The Woman of the World made some answer. 
She wished she had no conscience, and did not really 
like the Boy. He was big and muscular, with a face 
suggestive of all the Cardinal Virtues and Pears' soap. 
Lately there had come into his eyes a look that made 
her a little sorry. For she liked him, as has been 
said previously. The blow came before she had a 
chance to avert it. 

" Claudia," the Boy said, — it was the first time 
he had ever called her bv her Christian name, and he 
said it with a bashful tenderness, — "I love you — 
will you marry me ? " The Boy bent very low, almost 
touching her hair with his lips. 

178 



Founded on Fact 

There is always one subject that a man may be 
sure will interest a woman. There is always one 
statement that will not grow commonplace through 
frequent repetition. The love scenes are really the 
only ones in the comedy of life that most women 
enjoy acting for their own sake. 

But Claudia liked the Boy ; in fact, she liked him 
so well that she would have preferred putting her face 
on the cold white keys and crying : women are 
nothing if not illogical. Instead of such a bit of 
melodramatic bad taste, she laughed softly without 
looking up. " How absurd ! " she said, as if he had 
made quite a clever remark — for a boy. 

" My dear child," her tone was motherly, " I am 
ages older than you — quite five years. You would 
never cease regretting that you had married me. I 
should be old and worn before you were in your 
prime. No, you must find some one else, who will 
adore you and make you perfectly happy, and I will 
come to see you to lend the dignity of age to your 
marriage." 

''You are heartless," said the Boy, between his 
teeth. 

" Am I ? Well, I don't agree with you, and in 
a year you and she will thank me." 

" I can never love any one else." 

" Quite the conventional remark under the circum- 
stances. I should have felt quite hurt had you not 
said it. But it 's nonsense all the same. Besides, I 
care for — some one else." 

She told the lie with no apparent struggle. 

He left her there in the shadow still playing 
the noisy, blatantly cheerful two-step. He went 

179 



Founded on Fact 

too quickly to hear the music stop with a sudden 
crash, and to see her turn with wide-stretched arms, 
with her eyes Hke dewy stars shining through her 
tears. And perhaps it was well for him that he did 
not. 



i8o 



The Amorous Scientist 



THE AMOROUS SCIENTIST 

A SCIENTIST, with learning vain, j 

Who thought all things he could explain 
By means of nerve cells in the brain 

And molecules and motion, | 

Once fell a prey to Cupid's dart, ; 

And to the maid who stole his heart . I 

He thus attempted to impart , 

His passionate emotion : 

i 

i 
" My lobes occipital are wrecked, i 

(Their every cell thou dost affect), | 

Their vaso-motor process checked J 

By the mere concept of you. 

" Do yours respond likewise to me ? " j 

" Pray, sir, what do you mean ? " quoth she. 

" Why, only — simply," stammered he, I 

" In other words — I love you." i 

>t 

Ah, Science, all thy technique vain. 

Thy knowledge vast of world and brain, i 

Can ne'er the simple worth attain '| 

Of these three words, " I love you." I 



i8i 



A Song of Other Days 



A SONG OF OTHER DAYS 

HE was an old man, bent and gray ; she was a 
young girl hardly yet grown to womanhood. 
She sat on the arm of his chair, gently stroking the thin 
gray hair, and watching the dancing blaze in the 
fireplace. The fire cast fantastic shadows about the 
room, lighting up the dark corners for a moment, 
then leaving them to greater gloom. For a long 
time neither of the two spoke. Gradually the flames 
ceased trooping over the logs, and the gray sparks 
took shorter journeys chimney-ward. 

" Play to me," the old man said. 

The girl rose and took her violin from the table 
where it lay. For a moment was heard only the 
thrumming of strings ; then she played to him. It 
was a simple air, — one of the old ones that are 
always best, — and as the old man gazed into the 
glowing coals, he forgot the music and the girl and 
himself, and felt only the sweet thrill of another day, 
years gone. 

It was spring and they two were maying. They 
wandered through woodland and meadow, chasing the 
few early butterflies they saw, and gathering flowers 
here and there. Her face was hot and flushed and 
happy under her great white sunbonnet. A bit of 
curl had broken loose from its bonds and struggled 
out beneath her hat, and he begged her to give it to 
him. He smiled now as he thought of her scornful 
refusal, 

182 



A Song of Other Days 

She wanted some violets that grew on the other 
side of the brook, and he was helping her over the 
stepping-stones. In the most unsteady part he 
stopped and refused to go on until she had answered 
something he asked her. Blushing, with eyes cast 
down, she replied so softly that none but a lover 
might have heard. 

And afterward, weaiying of the birds and the 
flowers and the butterflies, they sat down on the 
flower-strewn bank, and with the fragrance of sweet- 
fern all about, she sang to him. 

It was the same song that the young girl had played 
to-night. The old man had rested his head in his 
hands, and as he gazed into the glowing embers, a 
dreamy half-smile upon his face, in the light of the 
dying fire he looked young again. When the music 
ceased, he did not move, and so, softly replacing her 
violin, the young girl stole away. 



183 



In Bohemia 



IN BOHEMIA 

«< Dans un grenler, qu'on est bien a vingt ans! *' 

A BOOK — in French — yellow covered, 
The smoke of a cigarette — 
On the divan by the windows 
It seems that I see you yet. 

Outside the roofs steeped in sunshine, 
'Neath a faint spring sky of blue. 

Below us the city's tumult — 
Above in our nest — we two. 

I was young — with all before me, 
You, too — with something behind, 

You told me one day, half crying ; 
I kissed you — and did n't mind. 

Vive la Follet ! and we pledged her 

In clear golden veuve cliquot 
(I 'd sold a sketch, I remember. 

How bad — then I did not know). 

A banquet ! a box our table. 

Other things claimed it as well — 

Fruit from the stand on the comer 
And bread served — au natureL 



184 



In Bohemia 

Your gowns are designed by Worth now, 
Perfection of style and tone j 

I go to a London tailor 

(Mine and H. B. H.'s own!) — 

Yet, if Fate choice should grant me 
' Twixt these and the days gone by, 

I M take the crust and the laughter 
In that bare room 'neath the sky ! 



j8s i 



That Babington Affair 



THAT BABINGTON AFFAIR 

" "^^OU will pardon my being so abominably per- 
1 sonal," I said to my friend Reeves in a 
burst of confidence, as we sat smoking before the 
open fire, talking over our summer at Babington. 
'' But did I ever tell you the little stunt that happened 
to Miss Marston and me on the links last summer? " 

He moved rather uneasily at the mention of that 
name, I thought, but listened with interest. 

" Well," I continued, " you know that, thanks to 
your exploiting of my peculiarities and a natural diffi- 
dence which I must admit, I got a reputation with 
those girls for being the most bashful thing there ; I 
don't think she seriously believed it, though. 

" It was the afternoon that you were feeling rather 
rocky from meeting those Yale people the night be- 
fore. I was much flattered when she accepted my 
services as instructor, and with a few remarks as to 
the uselessness of engaging a caddy, I proudly took 
an armful of clubs and we started. 

" You are also aware that the Babington golf course 
was not laid out with a view to pleasing the novice. 
Those apple orchards and swamps that diversify the 
landscape and the omnipresent Sackett brook, so 
dangerously near, are very trying. But that is 
neither here nor there. 

" Miss Marston progressed rapidly under my com- 
petent tuition. Going through Profanity Lane, we 

i86 



That Bablngton Affair 

chatted about Farmington, and upon my remarking 
that I should probably see Alice Walker in August, 
she exclaimed : ' Why, really ? Do give Alice my 
best love ! ' 

" ' May I keep it until I see her ? ' I asked, rather 
clumsily, trying your favorite bon mot. But just then 
the lusty Mrs. Wrenn-Smith (you remember seeing 
her avoirdupois galloping over the links) cried 
' Fore ! ' about twenty yards behind us, and we turned 
around inopportunely to see a large area of turf lose 
its connection. So my maiden effort was lost. 

" We passed ' Sleepy Hollow ' and ' Despair ' 
easily, but in approaching the eighth green a long 
mashie shot sent the ball across the brook, where it 
poised defiantly. I admit I was up a tree. 

" ' Thunder ! ' I think she said — some forbidding 
word of two syllables. ' How can I cross ? there 
does n't seem to be a sign of a bridge. And I so 
wanted to make this my record.' 

" ' A toppy lie, and you had such a good show for 
the bogy ! Won't you allow me to carry you over ? ' 
I suggested, and I swear I saw mischief in her look 
as she smiled at me and then turned in the direction 
of Mrs. Wrenn-Smith, — a friendly hill had already 
managed to conceal that lady." 

Reeves had removed his feet from the mantel early 
in the narrative, and now he clutched his chair ner- 
vously. I refused to notice this agitation and went 
on : 

" I imagine Miss Marston was surprised when she 
found herself speedily transferred to the other side. 
Anyway, she played the stroke in silence. We 
recrossed as before. 

187 



That Babington Affair 

" There was rather a long pause as we walked up. 
Finally she could n't refrain from laughing : ' Are 
you the Mr. Jackson they spoke of at the hotel as 
being so unfortunately — ' 

" I supplied, ' Such a bashful fool ? ' and assured 
her the accusation was entirely just. 

"Later, as we were seated on the club-house 
porch with several others, I alluded to our experi- 
ence : ' You know, Miss Marston and I had such 
an amusing adventure to-day,' I began. 

" ' Yes, and we only lost two strokes by it,' she 
deftly interposed, and commenced a discussion on 
the use of the niblech in putting. 

" My reputation for diffidence continued as good 
as ever — except with one person, and on the whole 
I am glad it is that way, as she is the only girl — " 

Reeves leaned forward eagerly : " Eh ! You don't 
mean that you and she — But Ethel Marston was 
a corking girl — quite the queen at Babington. I 
have some pleasant memories of her myself." 

Reeves did not seem to care particularly for my 
story. I confess I was too dense to see why at the 
time, but four months later their engagement was 
announced. I am planning a trip around the world 
— after graduation. 



Conviction 




CONVICTION 1 

ARRIAGE is a failure, ^ 

I at least divine — j 

Bachelors support me j 

In this claim of mine. ■' 

I hate a man that 's lovesick, 

Always looking sore, 
'S though he thought he ought tq 

Drink and smoke no more. I 

I 'm too young to marry, ij 

Like too well my fun ; 

And that ancient saying : \ 

" Go it while you 're young." \ 

Love and fame can never j 

Live together long ; | 

I shall choose the latter — j 

Love 's not worth a song. i 

. . . . • 'S 

J 

Helen gets here Sunday ? i 

Coming early ? Why, ] 

Think I '11 stay till Monday " 

Just to say good-by. ; 



189 



The Prince of Greater New York 



THE PRINCE OF GREATER NEW YORK 

MARCUS WILLOUGHBY was smoking a 
cigarette in his apartment on the fourth floor 
of Mrs. Elder's boarding-house on Somethingeth Street. 
Outside, a Sabbath calmness reigned over the usually 
clattering streets. Within was the fading aroma of 
Mrs. Elder's Sabbath dinner, of which Marcus Wil- 
loughby had just partaken. Marcus was lying on the 
sofa amid the wreck of a sixty-page Sunday paper 
which had engaged him during the morning hours. 
He was watching the little curl of smoke that wriggled 
out of the end of his cigarette. 

" And you are one of the competing princes ? " 
asked the old man, slowly. " Frankly, I would ad- 
vise you not to try it. It 's too risky, and the game 
is not worth the candle. To be sure, the Princess 
is a very beautiful princess and a great prize if you 
succeed, but there are plenty of princesses to be had 
almost as beautiful and for less trouble." 

The old man was sitting at his cottage doorstep. 
Before them a road wound over the hills. In the 
west the setting sun gilded the roofs and towers of 
the palace. It looked very fine, this palace in the 
distance with the green fields in front of it and be- 
yond the ruddy sky. But it was very disconcerting, 
and so was the old gentleman with his talk about 
princes and princesses. A moment ago Marcus was 
lying on his back looking at the faded design of Mrs. 

190 



The Prince of Greater New York 

Elder^s ceiling paper through a cloud of tobacco 
smoke. Well, it is proverbial that life is full of 
changes. 

" Really, my dear sir," Marcus began, " I am 
afraid I shall have to ask you to explain." 

" Then you are n't one of the competing princes ? " 
asked the old man. 

Marcus was forced to reply that he was not. 

" But you must be a prince ? " 

It was evident from the old gentleman's tone that 
it would be necessary to concede him this point. 
Marcus's curiosity was aroused. 

" Oh, of course I am a prince," he said non- 
chalantly. 

The old man looked relieved. " Merely in search 
of adventure, I suppose," he said. " In that case I 
would advise you to go to the next kingdom. Things 
are dead here since the Princess met with that little 
accident — decidedly dead. Of course, if you want, 
you can try to get into the palace over yonder, as the 
others have done. It's the only thing in the shape 
of adventure that this country can offer. But I 
would advise you not to try it, as I said before. It 's 
too dangerous. The underbrush is something awful 
— not been touched, you know, for about a century. 
The last man came to grief who tried it — scratched 
his eyes out." 

Marcus felt that he was beginning to get oriented. 

" But he scratched them in again, didn't he ? " he 
suggested, a little doubtfully. 

" No," said the old man, contemptuously ; " that's 
his side of the story, but he did nothing of the sort. 
It 's preposterous to think so." 

191 



The Prince of Greater New York 

Marcus felt decidedly crushed. 

" Ah, but he was a queer one ! " the old man 
chuckled, regaining his good nature at the recollec- 
tion. '^ The old duffer said to me very solemnly, 
' I do not undertake this enterprise with matrimonial 
intentions, but in the interests of science. I am 
especially delegated by the " Society for the Advance- 
ment of Disillusion " to make a careful examination 
of the whole matter and to report the result of my 
investigation to the society. We have doubts, in 
fact, about there being any princess at all.* And 
then the fellow went into the thicket a few yards, 
scratched out his eyes, and came back fully persuaded 
that there was no princess. He did not get as far as 
the others ; they never came back at all." 

" Well, I think I must be going," said Marcus. 
" It will be dark soon." 

" You think you will try it, then," said the old 
man. " Well, the best of good luck to you, and 
don't worry about the time of day. It has been sun- 
set here for about a hundred years now, more or less, 
and it 's likely to stay so for a while, I guess." 

Marcus followed the road along for quite a bit. 
Presently he saw on ahead the thicket which sur- 
rounded the palace. It certainly looked formidable. 

But as he approached nearer, it underwent a curious 
change. The thorn bushes at the edge became trans- 
formed into flowering plants, which of their own 
accord bent aside and let him pass through ; and, more 
curiously still, this transformation continued as he 
advanced till he found himself before the palace gate. 

Marcus entered. The warden was sitting asleep 
in his box. He walked through the courtyard. The 

192 



The Prince of Greater New York 

dogs were sleeping in their kennels, and the guards 
leaning on their pikes. Farther he went, into the 
main hall, where the king and queen were asleep on 
their thrones. It was a very fine room, this main 
hall, but Marcus did not stop there. He followed a 
long passage and ascended a little winding stairway 
at the end of it that led into a turret chamber. There 
was the Princess lying on the floor, with just the least 
speck of blood on her palm. 

" O, poor misguided representative of the Soci- 
ety for the Advancement of Disillusion ! " thought 
Marcus. 

And they lived happily ever after ? Unfortunately 
not. 

Hand in hand Marcus and the Princess stood at 
the window looking out over the garden of roses and 
lilies, which had once been a frightful thicket. Mar- 
cus had just told the Princess of the many kings' 
sons who had tried to reach the palace and been 
held fast by the cruel thorn bushes till wild beasts had 
come and eaten them up. This had made the Prin- 
cess pensive. 

" H'm ! " coughed some one behind them. It 
was the King and his spouse, who had just entered 
the chamber. 

Marcus turned and made obeisance before them. 

" You are the scion of some noble house, I trust, 
young man, or you would not have ventured to take 
this liberty," said the King, rather crossly. 

" Yes, may it please your majesty, of the house of 
Butts & Tugaway, New York. No better house in 
the country — you can look them up in Bradstreet." 
Marcus was a little confused. 
13 193 



The Prince of Greater New York 

These were terms new to his majesty's heraldry. 
" What may your title be ? " he asked. 

Marcus regained his presence of mind and assum- 
ing a haughty tone, replied, " Your Highness, I am 
the Prince of Greater New York." The occasion 
demanded a decisive stand. 

"Then let the marriage ceremony take place at 
once," cried the King. 

The great hall of the palace was crowded with the 
King's retainers all dressed in their best. The King 
himself, with his consort, sat on their thrones arrayed 
in their robes of state. Before them stood Marcus 
and the Princess, the latter in organdie, or tulle, or 
something else ravishing and appropriate to the 
occasion, and surrounded by her bridesmaids. From 
a bower of palms a mandolin orchestra was playing 
the last strains of the Wedding March. The cere- 
mony was about to take place. 

Just then Marcus saw enter the room, unan- 
nounced, but no less confidently on that account, 
a figure he knew very well. It was Mr. George 
Daniel Butts, of Butts & Tugaway, New York. He 
came striding up through the hall, his hands in his 
trousers' pockets, his great seals dangling over the 
brow of his portly paunch, his silk hat tipped on the 
back of his head, and that irritated, contemptuous 
look on his face that Marcus had noticed there before 
when there had been something wrong with his 
balance sheet. 

Mr. Butts came right up before the throne. 

" Look here, you old fool," he cried, addressing his 
astonished majesty, " what are you doing ? Marry- 
ing your daughter to this rascal here ! He 's no 

194 



The Prince of Greater New York 

prince, nor anything like it. He 's my clerk, whom 
I pay twenty dollars a week to, and make sit on a 
stool nine hours a day and six days in the week, try- 
ing to earn it. He 's swindled you. He has n't a 
red cent in the world, to say nothing about being 
a prince. Do you know what kind of an es- 
tablishment he could provide for his wife ? A 
four-room flat in Harlem, where her cook and her 
housemaids and her hairdresser and her ladies in 
waiting, if she had any, would have to be her own 
hands." 

The King glared all kinds of fury at Marcus. 

" To prison with him ! " he shouted, and his 
guards carried out the order. 

Marcus was lying on a pallet of straw in his 
dungeon. The sun had gone down, and the moon 
was well up in the sky. A gleam of it came through 
the window away up above Marcus's head and 
lighted up the opposite wall. It was almost mid- 
night. The guard outside was asleep from the sound 
of his snoring, but as Marcus was chained to a big 
ring in the wall, it did not matter. 

He had almost gone to sleep himself when the 
door was opened softly, and there stood the Princess. 
She had a big bunch of keys in her hand. 

" I have come to set you free," she said. 

Marcus said nothing because he felt so much 
ashamed for having told them all that he was a prince 
when he was not. But then it seemed as if he v/as 
at the time. 

Marcus watched the Princess in silence, as she 
unfastened his fetters. When she had finished he 
followed her past the sleeping guard and down a 

19s 



The Prince of Greater New York 

long passageway till they both emerged on the broad 
terrace before the palace. 

" Thank you," he said, kneeling and kissing her 
hand. 

The Princess watched him as he turned to leave 
her. " Are you going — without me ? " she said. 

Marcus looked back sadly. 

" It is true that I am no prince at all," he answered, 
*' and the rest that he said too." 

" Oh, I don't care for that," cried the Princess. 
" I don't need Gretchen to do my hair — or the 
others. We will go together and live in a — what 
did he call it ? — in Harlem." 

Marcus found himself in his room on the fourth 
floor of Mrs. Elder's boarding-house on Somethingeth 
Street. He was alone, for the Princess had stayed 
behind in that land where princesses are still to be 
gained by the adventurous. Unfortunately one cannot 
live there happily ever after. 



196 



A Relic 



A RELIC i 

j 

Museum — ■ 

1 
» 

SUCH a dainty thing you 'd hardly guess ' j 

The evil it could do, j 

With hilt impearled and slender blade I 

Of softly mottled blue. i 

\ 

And yet, one night, in a man's hot clasp, \ 

To mar and to destroy, j 

Paying shame's debt to jealousy . J 

It went as death's envoy. | 

:| 
You know the place ; 'twixt the throat and ear, ^ 

Where the hair 's fine and light, .| 

And swelling veins show tenderly J 

Soft purple through the whiter 

i 

I 

Dear God ! how it leaped to drink its fill i 

Of the red, cloy'd warm and wet ! ] 

Its steely heart at the memory i 

Must thrill with rapture yet ! i 

i 

You 'd hardly guess — ah, the wreck it wrought ! ■ 

And then, its tongue withdrawn, J 

The awful thing is left to meet i 

The wan, gaunt face of dawn. i 

I 
197 I 



A Bargain 



A BARGAIN 

THE painter's wife had come all the way up to 
the studio ; her soft hair and quiet unobtru- 
sive little face looked pale and monotonous in the 
gray north light from above. The painter softened 
his brushes in a tin of turpentine and laid them away. 
He glanced across the big bare room at the slender 
figure and raised his eyebrows. 

"I came up to get you, Jim, — if — if you are 
coming home to supper," she said. 

" I 'm sorry you took that trouble," he answered. 
" I 'm dining out. I thought I told you." 

" I know, Jim, but I was so lonesome. I read 
till I was tired — I was reading ' Tess,' you know 
— and I got nervous and fidgety, and I went to see 
Mrs. Taylor on the floor below, and — and — I won- 
dered whether you would n't have supper home to- 
night. You have n't for four days. Why, Jimmy, 
your model sees more of you than I." 

" You have given yourself rather a needless journey, 
then, because I am promised for this evening. I 'm 
glad you satisfied your suspicions, though. I sent her 
home an hour ago — if you care to take my word, 
that is." 

" Oh, oh ! How can you say such nasty things ! 
I only wanted to have you home this one evening. 
You are n't very good to me now, Jim, I think. 
And I have such a nice hot supper and that salad 
you like. You used to say — " 

198 



A Bargain 

" Spare us the description, please, Nellie. I am 
really very sorry." He took off his working blouse. 
" There 's nothing else, is there ? If you '11 excuse 
me, I will clean up." 

"I 'm going in a minute, Jim. I did n't mean to 
interrupt you. I am afraid I spoiled a sitting yester- 
day, coming in. No, don't bother to come with me. 
I know the stairs. Good-by." She closed her lips 
firmly and went carefully down the flights of narrow 
stairs into the street crowded with home-going shop- 
people. 

Three months later she went away with another 
man who said he cared for her. He died, it seems, 
and no one has heard of her since. However, such 
pictures as Jimmy's cannot be had for nothing. For 
my part, since I have seen " The Harvesters," and 
that study of a " Girl in Gray," and " The Greatest 
of These is Charity," — the last and finest of all (I 
saw that at the Metropolitan with its salon number 
fresh in the corner), I can only think the v/orld had 
all the best of the bargain. 



199 



A Ballad of Dorothy 



A BALLAD OF DOROTHY 

IT 's " Dorothy ! Where 's Dorothy ? " 
From morn to even fall, 
There 's not a lad on Cowslip Farm 
Who joins not in the call. 

It 's Dolly here and Dolly there, 

Where can the maiden be ? 
No wench in all the countryside 's 

So fine as Dorothy. 

With tucked-up gown and shining pail. 

Before the day is bright, 
Down dewy lanes she singing goes 

Among the hawthorns white. 

Perchance her roses need her care, 

She tends them faithfully. 
There 's not a rose in all the world 

As fresh and sweet as she ! 

With morning sunshine in her hair 

A-churning Dolly stands ; 
Oh, happy churn, I envy it. 

Held close between her hands. 

And when the crescent moon hangs bright 

Athwart the soft night sky, 
Down shady paths we strolling go. 

Just Dorothy and L 
200 



A Ballad of Dorothy 

As true of heart as sweet of face, 

With gay and girlish air, 
The painted belles of citydom 

Are not a whit as fair. 

Come Michaelmas the parish chimes 

Will ring out merrily. 
Who is the bride I lead to church ? 

Why, who but Dorothy ? 



201 



An Affair of the Heart 



AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART 

ONCE there was a man with whom Chance had 
a very desperate flirtation. Now Chance is 
a very fickle goddess, whose affections are a bit less 
stable than her poise on the wheel which the sculptors 
put under her foot. But you know as well as I, if 
you have seen her, — in marble as the sculptors re- 
member her, or as you know her yourself, when 
you look through a grate fire from the depths of a 
high-backed chair, — that she is a very beautiful and 
gracious and alluring person, albeit cruel and indiffer- 
ent when she has a will. 

After the manner of womankind, she fell in love 
with a man who had little need of her, and, to say 
the truth, thought little good of her (for some of 
her escapades had been not a little daring, and there 
are busybodies to speak ill of us all). My lady was 
fairly taken aback at this, for her admirers aforetime 
had never been slow to respond to her smile — 
indeed, all the fault she found was that the stupid 
fellows did not- know when she was tired of them. 
But this man was already not ill-settled with the good 
things in life, had no particular lack of the favors at 
Chance's bestowal, and seemed quite content. All 
the others had been fortune-hunters, said Chance. 
Thereupon she completed her most bewitching toilet, 
which consisted of tying her hair in a new knot ; and 
she managed to show her profile pretty often because 

202 



An Affair of the Heart 

she thought it better than her full face; and she 
shook her cornucopia over him till it was fairly- 
ragged. 

But the man was not in haste to come at her beck, 
nor did he ever allow her to feel sure of him ; for his 
speeches had a ring to them neither false nor true, 
and he never showed his trust in Chance, as the 
others had done. The others were young for the 
most part, and had told her their trials and ambitions, 
and had plighted themselves eternally, as young men 
feel bound to do; while he was older and a little 
more cynical and far too wise to do anything of that 
kind. Chance did her prettiest, and was kinder than 
ever before — especially when she heard her last ad- 
mirer was still attentive to Opportunity and Ability 
(these were steadier ladies, but, to quote hearsay, old 
flames of his). 

When, after all these efforts. Chance saw that he 
was still as smilingly half-hearted and content, she 
left him in a huff. And that was after a very trying 
little scene, I assure you. She wished him more ill- 
luck, and cursed him more heartily than any of the 
others (for she always abandoned them when they 
seemed abject enough, like the vicious little coquette 
she was). The man laughed at her malevolence, and 
went calmly back to his more serious friendships of 
former years — and it seemed that he mourned Chance 
not at all. But the bigger gods at the back of things 
seemed to enjoy her discomfiture. 



203 



Noel 



NOEL 

EACH star gleams like an Altar-light, 
The great winds chaunting pass. 
The earth hath donned her vestments fair 
To keep the Holy Mass. 

Now, who are these who wend the fields 

To hill-top Bethlehem ? 
The night grows late — the inn is full, 

There is no room for them. 

They may not bide within the inn, 

But in the stable-place 
Amid the kine she lays her down, 

Our Lady full of grace. 

Each star gleams like an Altar-light, 
The great winds chaunting pass. 

The earth hath donned her vestments fair 
To keep the Holy Mass. 

Lo, she hath put her Baby down 

Within the soft sweet hay. 
The vaulted skies are quick with lights 

Of the first Christmas Day. 

Across the world of glistening snow 

It dawneth now as then, 
And Christian hearts are glad to sing 

Of God's good grace to men. 
204 



Noel 

Each star gleams like an Altar-light, 
The great winds chaunting pass. 

The earth hath donned her vestments fair 
To keep the Holy Mass. 



205 



Three Pipes 



THREE PIPES 



THE hallway on the top floor of a Fifth Avenue 
apartment house ended in two rooms which 
made the bachelor quarters of Henry Forel. In front 
of the door of the larger room Forel was now jan- 
gling at his chain for the latchkey. The hall was 
dark, or Forel's hand unsteady, for he botched about 
in vain for the key-hole. 

" D — that porter ! " he muttered doggedly through 
tight lips, as he at last rammed the key home, and 
flung the door back against the rubber stop, making 
it shiver painfully on its hinges. 

Without more words he shuffled his way between 
the furniture to the gas-jet, fumbled after a match, 
found one, and broke it against the sole of his shoe. 
He rubbed another along the seat of his trousers. 
There was no head on it, and he hurled it in the 
direction of the grate. A third flared off against his 
finger. " D — these matches ! " was all he chose to 
remark. Then he pulled off his coat, drew on a house 
jacket, and dragging a large chair up to the fireplace, 
sat down in it with a grunt of profound disgust. 

Near him stood a smoking-table on which a pipe 
rested beside a paper of " Old Gold." Mechanically 
he took up the pipe and began stuffing it. Then, 
remembering that he had not crumbled the tobacco, 
he knocked it out, and milled it in the palm of his 

206 



Three Pipes 

hand. Filling the pipe once more, he lighted it, fol- 
lowing a chain of habit. 

For five minutes or so the smoke wreathed and 
eddied about his head. The narcotic began to tell, 
and his body and limbs relaxed. A long and rather 
tremulous sigh came between two puffs of smoke. 
Presently he put the pipe aside on the table, rose, 
v/ent into his bedroom, and came back with a 
photograph in his hand. This he put on the table, 
leaning it against a candlestick, and sat quietly con- 
fronting it. At last he took up the photograph 
again and kept it close in front of his face. He 
did not know that he was holding his breath till the 
air forced a way all at once through his lips. 

" I love her," he said, and sank back in his chair. 
The hand which held the photograph fell down at 
his side. 

II 

It was two o'clock and Forel had not come in. 
A gusty gas-jet dodged to and fro in the hall of the 
upper story. The house was asleep. Then the 
front door slammed far below, and an irregular clatter 
of light shoes wound up the stairs. It was Forel, in 
evening dress, and wrapped chin-deep in an opera 
coat. The key went straight home, the first match 
struck brightly, and the lamp shone warmly through 
the room. Forel took the chair by the hearth, care- 
fully kneaded his tobacco, filled and lighted his pipe. 

" I will have a little blaze," he said, and stooping, 
set fire to the paper under the irons. " There," he 
added as he settled deep between the arms of the 
chair, " there, that 's just what I wanted." 

207 



Three Pipes 

By and by, when the pipe had slowly yielded up 
its ghost, he brought the photograph again and set 
it where he could look at it while his head rested 
back on the cushion. What were his thoughts ? 

" Fool that I am ! " he blurted out, and sprang to 
his full height, every tendon in his body taut as 
cords. " Fool that I am ! I should have known." 
He strode to the window, threw it up violently, 
and breathed hard, looking out into the pale black 
of the sky about him. 

Ill 

Steps came slowly but steadily up the winding 
flights to Forel's door. It was Forel himself. He 
went in, and with deft, easy movements set the 
room to rights. A minute more and he was sitting 
in the usual chair puffing at a pipe. He glanced 
at a calendar on the mantelpiece. 

" Five years ago to-night," he said with a light 
sigh, "and," he added, looking at his watch, "just 
about this time." He kept rubbing the face of the 
watch with his thumb, and stared with wide eyelids 
— at nothing. 

Then the light of thought crept into his face again. 

" It will do no harm," he argued with some inner 
voice, " I have n't let myself since then." Rising 
and going to a cabinet, he brought thence a portfolio 
which he laid open on his knees. 

" Here it is," he murmured, as he drew from 
within a photograph. He held it close to his face 
and gazed at it eagerly for a long, long time. All 
at once he looked up with a start. He shook him- 

20S 



Three Pipes 

self and slipped the photograph hastily back between 
the leather flaps. 

" No more of this," he exclaimed ; " what 's the 
use ? " and going again to the cabinet, he locked the 
portfolio into its drawer and returned to the fire. 
Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he 
stared into the logs. And for a long time he scarcely 
moved but to breathe, staring into the logs. 



14 209 



Ninety-nine Class Poem 



NINETY-NINE CLASS POEM 



/N" the hush of the early summer^ 
* Neath the smile of the soft fune sky^ 
We^ who have lived together^ 

Gather to say good-hy. 
And now^ with our labor ended^ 

And the hours we may linger few ^ 
We kneel for our mother'' s blessings 

As is our right to do. 
Stately and tall is our mother^ 

Tender and strong and wise ; 
With the light of infinite knowledge 

In the depths of her steadfast eyes. 
And as we kneel before her^ 

Her voice rings clear and slow^ 
As she speaks the words of the blessing 

That she gives to her sons^ ere they go. 



II 

" Sons of my four years' nurture, 
Ye who have eaten my bread, 

Pause ere you take your journey 
Down the wide roads ahead ! 

Listen ! that I may tell you 
In simple speech and plain, 

2IO 



Ninety-nine Class Poem 

How from the debt that ye owe me 

Ye may quit yourselves again ! 
The wisdom of generations 

I have spread for your delight ; 
And the truths that men have died for 

Ye may claim as your simple right. 
Heirs of the hoarding ages, 

How use ye your legacy ? 
Masters of many talents 

Render account to me ! 



Ill 

" Are ye puffed with the pride of learning ? 

Are ye pleased with the praise of fools ? 
Have your minds grown cramped and narrow 

With the lore that ye learned in schools ? 
Has your knowledge made you slothful, 

And your culture made you vain. 
That ye think to gain without labor 

What another must toil to gain ? 
Then are your years here wasted 

As pearls that are cast to swine ! 
Then are ye servants of servants. 

And no true sons of mine ! 
For they who began behind you 

Shall pass you in the race j 
And untaught men shall shame you 

In the open market-place ! 

IV 

" From the quiet heart of the mountains 
Ye must take journey, down 

211 



Ninety-nine Class Poem 

To the world, that Is ever careless 

Of the skirts of a scholar's gown. 
And the sheltered life of college 

Ye must leave behind you then, 
And bear your parts in the battle 

Where men fight hard with men. 
There there is naught to help you 

But your wit and strength of limb. 
There every man is your master 

Until you have mastered him. 
For a great law governs the fighting 

And all are ruled thereby — 
' He that is strong shall conquer ! 

He that is weak must die ! ' 



" Therefore, that ye may merit 

Men's praise when your heads are gray. 
Cling to the good ye have gathered 

From my teaching that ends to-day. 
Ye have learned many true sayings 

And many wise maxims heard, 
For some ye know the reason. 

And for some ye must take my word. 
But, though ye forget the others, 

These two hold firm and clear : 
The first Is — ' He that would win must work^ 

The second — ' Thou shalt not fear I * 
For the vices of a strong man 

Are pardoned in the end ; 
But he that is born a coward 

Hath neither foe nor friend ! 

212 



Ninety-nine Class Poem 



VI 

" Be tender, and quick to pity ' 

At the sight of another's wrong, ! 
Humble before a weaker. 

Cringing not to the strong. ; 

Paying each service twofold, ;: 

Nor counting the debt clear then ; ^ 

Keeping your faith with women, ! 

Speaking the truth to men. i: 

'I 

VII j 

" High in the purple mountains, } 

Where the world's strife cannot come, ^ 

Ringed by the iron cordon ' ^ 

Of the hills that guard my home, j 

I gather my sons about me | 

And teach them at my knee, \ 

And when they have learned their lessons, ' 

My sons go forth from me. 
Over the world they wander, j 

In sunshine and wind and storm, j 

But I sit here in the quiet room 

And keep the hearthstone warm ; 
Watching and listening and waiting ; 

For their footsteps at the door, i 

Till one by one as the years go by i 

My sons come home once more. 
Then I fling wide the portal j 

And welcome them to the hall. 
With praise for the strong, and pity ; 

For the weak, and love for all, ! 

213 ! 



Ninety-nine Class Poem 

And the welcome that I give them 

Is reward for those that win ; 
And they who are spent with fighting 

Find a new strength therein. 
And when they have told their stories, 

And rested a little space, 
They rise, and get them forth again 

Each man to his own place ; 
To take the task that waits him, 

And labor to the end. 
That he may win a living 

For wife and child and friend. 
Careless of sneers and frowning 

From curs that cringe and shirk, 
Asking no greater pleasure 

Than the sight of his finished work. 

VIII 

"Ye who to-day must follow 

Whither your fates shall lead. 
These are your elder brothers ! 

Prove yourselves of the breed ! 
See that ye count as shameful 

No work your hands can do ; 
And when ye are spent, come back to me. 

That I may comfort you. 
Now, through the open portal, 

Rise, and go forth to-day ! 
And a mother's blessing go with you, 

To help you on your way." 

WiLLiAMSTOWN, June 20, 1899. 



214 



(( 



The Blind Receive their Sight" 



"THE BLIND RECEIVE THEIR SIGHT" 



f^^ LORY to Allah ! Love is but a hieroglyph 



to me, and I know not what it means." 
A student stared through a blue-flamed fire into a 
phantom world, while outside the city clocks struck 
three. The fire was bright, but everything else 
seemed to be a pall. To tell the truth, a man can't 
always afFord to let two and a half college years slip 
away in idleness ; for, when it becomes advisable to 
seize the trailing threads, lo, it is too late. So the 
student was about to receive his quietus at the hands 
of the great university, and a regiment of tutors 
could n't have " whipped him into line " for the 
exams. 

Now the father of Her^ whose photograph was in 
his pocket, in the fire-flame, and burned deepest in 
his brain, was the old ex-judge ; and the ex-judge had 
fished off a log with bent pins fifty years ago, with his 
father. He would hear how the university " dropped " 
the delinquent, and would remark, " So that 's the kind 
of a boy he is ! " and, seeing his daughter very friendly 
with the young reprobate, away he would snatch 
her to foreign capitals ; — and what girl ever looked 
through Parisian streets, and over three thousand miles 
of rolling Atlantic, but her girlhood memories faded 
and her old acquaintanceship became almost as if it 
had not been ? Then he thought of her sitting on a 

215 



"The Blind Receive their Sight" 

hotel veranda and holding a dozen admirers at bay, 
while she prays that night or something would come 
to relieve her ; for of all created things, men are the 
most unmitigated bores. 

" Well ? " asked the student of the wearer of the 
faded tennis cap just across the fireplace, " have you 
solved my problem for me ? " 

" Let me see that picture again," said the other. 
He took the photograph and held it at arm's length ; 
then he placed it on the shelf and inspected it at 
two yards' range ; after that he made a microscopic 
examination at close quarters, and ended by turning 
up his soles to the fire and his face to the ceiling. 
" If she looks anything like that^'' — he spoke im- 
pressively and seemed to be emotionally aff'ected, — 
" go pretty blamed quick and enlist for the war." 

It was a perfect solution. Who would know of 
the disgraceful standing, and the student could enter 
next year a class lower, — and there would be no 
more loafing — not by a long shot. And the next 
morning H. H. Brown, collegian, enlisted for the 
Spanish War. 

.•■••••• 

On the night of July i the ex-judge's daughter 
could not sleep, so she threw a shawl about her 
shoulders and sat by the window. " What a silly 
boy ! " she muttered anxiously, and meant something 
else. Then she looked deep into the unsoundable 
heaven-dome, and saw visions that no girl but an army 
nurse should ever see. 

All ni2;ht they brought in the wounded to Siboney 
— men who would be helpless as babes forevermore, 

216 



"The Blind Receive their Sight" 

men whose light was setting in black eclipse. A 
boy, with his fair hair bedraggled with mud and 
dust, was received by the surgeons with a deprecating 
smile, which meant that those overworked machines 
could not bother with those who needed only a spade 
and a wooden cross. " The kid wants the photograph 
sent to that address,^' said a bearer, thumbing a blood- 
stained portrait of a young girl with a long jagged 
groove in the card right across the eyes. " Write on 
the back, ' I was never worth using, anyhow.' " 

" I was never worthy of you, anyway,'* corrected 
the quick-witted Red Cross helper who undertook the 
mission, looking down at the pale, fine face of the 
boy and guessing a romance. And then they laid 
him away in a stately row over by the trees, where 
many had already entered upon the long, dawnless 
night. He tossed wearily and babbled of brooks and 
springs, and then this battered, blood-stained specimen 
of humanity began a wonderful song in prose about 
some fair young face which had no more business 
to be dragged into such a grim scene than a violet in 
a coal-mine ; after that he wanted a drink of water, 
and asked for his mother, and then — off into a 
great, swimming, shadow world of flitting void and 
airy nothingness. The great scheme had worked 
beautifully — the university record had been com- 
pletely wiped out, and incidentally something else 
seemed to be wiped out too ; — most problems in 
life have two solutions, and occasionally the wrong 
one will turn up. 

On the morning of the second of July three of 
that band of hopeless cases were still alive, and even 
gaining. " What t'ell are ye puttin' me with these 

217 



" The Blind Receive their Sight " 

dead men for ? " asked one. " Give me a drink of 
the genewine stufF," said No. 2. The third was the 
boy, and he talked about ice and Her and Her and 
ice, and politely requested the surgeon to go climb a 
tree, which that dignitary strangely decHned to do. 
• •*..... 

Now some parts of Lat. 42° N. are pleasant for 
summer resorts. The home of Brown Senior was 
fanned by the hotel-keepers' " salubrious breezes." 
It was just the right altitude above sea-level for the 
ex-judge's disease with a Greek name, and he straight- 
way took a cottage for that season. The ex-judge's 
daughter was everywhere, — upon the old hills, and 
down in the woody ravines ; she floated in a canoe 
on the blue lake, and spoiled camera films by the 
score. But all of a sudden the camera company 
ceased to receive mutilated pictures and double ex- 
posures ; all of a sudden she ceased the long twilights 
out on the unruifled lake ; all of a sudden she stopped 
reading Kipling, and laughed and cried over a pho- 
tograph minus the eyes. " So it was n't just admira- 
tion, and he really did care ever so much, and he 
was n't just hanging around because he did n't have 
anything better to do, and so funny that I was so 
blind, — blind as this picture, and he was blind too." 
And then she looked over to the far blue hills 
and the white, sun-streaked river, and saw ever so 
much farther, — people can occasionally see a long 
distance when they look that way, — quite consider- 
ably beyond the bounds of this little world v/ith its 
girdle of twenty-five thousand miles. 

And then one day there came a stretcher, and an- 
other day a girl stood at the door and wanted to see 

218 



** The Blind Receive their Sight " 

the patient. " He may not know you, miss," said 
the nurse ; " sometimes he *s ofF, for a little time." 
But she entered. 

'' Huh ! " exclaimed the invalid. " You come to 
nurse too ? By the way, you 're about the homeliest 
I 've seen yet — not a bit like Her J'* 

"Who's that ? " she asked gently, but trembling. 

" Who 's she ? " — impatiently. " Why, the one 
with the eyes taken out by a bullet. I had three in 
me. So she 's blind — blind, blind, blind. She '11 
be blind till some Russian count comes along ; then 
her eyes '11 open. Why, I did it all for her." 

" Did what ? " 

u Why, I would have flunked out at the university, 
and I knew her father would break off everything 
then, and I would n't even, get a chance to assassi- 
nate the Russian count. So I went to the war. 
Heroic, was n't it ? " 

" Yes, and you went up the hill ahead of the whole 
company, after being shot twice," she said, coloring. 
It seemed like talking to a lunatic, but a lunatic with 
a glorious record. 

He smiled. " I was thinking of Her ; thought 
She was looking on. To tell the truth, if I 'd been 
in my senses, I 'd have been behind a tree. They 're 
made for sensible men." 

" Thought of me^ thought / was looking on," she 
said dreamily. 

" Ton ! who said you ? " he exclaimed gruffly, 
looking hard — and he began to brush cobwebs from 
his eyes. " I do believe — no — delirium again." 

" It 's only I," she said. 

" Only ! Why, I 've been seeing you for a month 

219 



"The Blind Receive their Sight" 

back. You 're a phantasm, you know. You must n't 
talk so clearly ; phantasms don't." 

She walked quietly up and laid her hand on his hot 
cheek. " It is n't delirium this time." 

He pondered, and the world seemed to drift back j 
or rather he seemed to drift back into the world. 

" It is n't," he said soberly ; " but it 's worse. 
You 've heard all I 've said and will go and laugh 
over it." 

" — And cry over it." 

" Why ? " 

" Oh, because." 

He looked at her solemnly. " I '11 tell you frankly, 
since you 've heard all," he said. " My v/hole world 
has always been within three feet radius of you. You 
never saw it. But now I 'm only an old, battered 
hulk, with three bullet-holes, and it '11 be months, 
even, before I 'm around, and a year before I get 
back my strength. I surrender ; I 'm out of the 
race. But you were worth it," looking at her ad- 
miringly. " And now, I suppose, I must say good- 
by — forever — forever, of course, considering that 
I 'm not plucky at all on such things. My little 
scheme did n't work, you see. I did n't bargain for 
all this." He was making a gallant effort to tide 
over the season of embarrassment. 

" That photograph had her eyes torn out. She 
was blind ; and you think I 'm blind too," she 
mused. 

" Oh, it 's all right. I 'm a mere wreck," he 
protested, not knowing what she was driving at. 

Her eyes were on him with that old look of mys- 
tery. It 's a pretty good thing to be a wreck some- 

220 



" The Blind Receive their Sight " 

times. A .276-inch perforation can now and then 
sweep away a cloud of misunderstanding very quickly, 
and a mute, inanimate Mauser ball disentangle what 
is beyond human ingenuity. I imagine the girl looked 
clear through the eternities that time, as she sank on 
her knees by the bedside, and, resting one hand on 
his, whispered to him that secret. And, as she 
touched her cheek to his, the revelation broke fully, 
and he laid his other hand on hers, and the sky split, 
and he saw into the seventh heaven, and into the 
seventh of the seventh — which is the forty-ninth — 
and — But, alas ! I understand not such things ; and, 
praise be to Allah and the Prophet, all love and senti- 
ment are to me but a sealed book, and my life is far 
removed from them all, now and evermore. Amen 
and Amen. 



221 



At the End 



AT THE END 

I WONDER did you understand, 
Or if you ever knew 
That all these little halting songs 
Were made for you ? 

A message 'cross a world of change, 

And weary leagues of space 
From one who might not take your hands. 

Nor see your face. 

Would I might meeter service do. 

And fairer tribute bring — 
Than these poor faltering waifs of time 

From love and spring. 

These records, fashioned here and there 

Along a winding way ; 
These dying echoes of a past. 

Half sad, half gay. 

All broken music — faint and thin. 

Ah, might I give instead 
The lyrics that my heart has sung 

In words unsaid ! 

Yet take them, Dear, — for good or ill, 

To you they all belong. 
Who are the singing's very soul. 

Heart of the sono;! 



222 



HIO 89 



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